I wish there were a lot more people visiting my pages. I wish it for reasons you may not suspect. I wish it because I need to be reminded, we all do, of what is good in our world, in our country and in each other. I am occasionally reminded of it when Melly, someone I have never met, gets excited because I was able to hit practice balls for the first time in nine months. Or when Gina knows I am in pain, looks at me with tears in her eyes and asks, "What can I do to help?" Or when someone somewhere in the world leaves me a message after visiting my page and thanks me for telling the story of my accident. They say they are writing to me because they know I can understand what they have had to endure, and they tell me what happened to them and how it made them feel.
This is why I wish there were many, many more visitors here. I want to tell them how I feel and what I think and believe and what is important to me. I want to hear what they think about it and find out what we have in common and what they can tell me that I haven't thought of yet.
I am, we all are, too informed these days. Television, newspapers, magazines all tell us the pain and cruelty and sickness in our world. The twelve year old girl who is kidnapped and butchered and left to rot in the woods. The baby who is callously stuffed into a garbage bag and left to die in a dumpster on some city street. The terrorist who blows up a public building killing hundreds in the name of God, Allah or Buddha. The corruption in our government and in business. I could go on all day. We know all too well about these things. They are sensational and violent and popular and newsworthy. But they are just about all we hear about. I am sick of hearing it and seeing it. But most of all I am sick of feeling it, of feeling that tight knot, that helpless ache deep inside as another horror story takes it's toll. There are other things in this world too! Good and decent things done by good and decent people. I want to hear these stories more often. I need to hear and see these stories more often.
This is why I wish there were more visitors here. I want to hear their stories of courage and love and honor and caring. I want to hear from real people how these things are not concepts of a past era, but are practiced every day in every city. Intellectually I know these good things must exist as more than an occasional curiosity, but emotionally it feels like I am wishful thinking, trying to see the world through rose colored glasses. You all know this feeling I am sure. It would be easy to give up, to lose hope, to accept the world we see in the news. But if I do that, if we do that, then what is the point in being here? A belief that there is something to strive for, that a good and decent world is possible and even inevitable, will not come from television or the papers or the government. It will come only from each other, from you and from me, one person at a time, and that is why I wish there were a lot more visitors here!!
Thanks, Jim.
I wish there were a lot more people visiting my pages. I wish it for reasons you may not suspect. I wish it because I need to be reminded, we all do, of what is good in our world, in our country and in each other. I am occasionally reminded of it when Melly, someone I have never met, gets excited because I was able to hit practice balls for the first time in nine months. Or when Gina knows I am in pain, looks at me with tears in her eyes and asks, "What can I do to help?" Or when someone somewhere in the world leaves me a message after visiting my page and thanks me for telling the story of my accident. They say they are writing to me because they know I can understand what they have had to endure, and they tell me what happened to them and how it made them feel.
