People are Amazing

All too often I find myself shaking my head and just really wondering what the hell is wrong with people. Politicians often inspire such as response. Sometimes it's other drivers, other parents, facebookers, etc. If I'm not careful, I begin to see them everywhere, whether they are there or not. I start to shaking my head all the time. My criteria becomes less and less well defined. It all declines into habit, which devolves into a general decline in my view of the world. (I don't enjoy that. It's not the world I want to live in.) And when all of that begins to happen I coincidently start to forget all of the little and big things that people do everyday that make them amazing in a very good way. 

So, in an effort to remind myself just how intensely creative, innovative, generous, talented, ethical, happy, peaceful or just plane good people can be, I've started sharing examples, once a week, here. I hope you like them and see some of what inspires me in them. 

Like I said, I find these people amazing for all kinds of very small and sometimes very big reasons, and you might not agree... and that's okay, because I think diversity of opinion is one of the truly amazing things about us human beings too. Evolutionarily we are all so in the same boat; survive, procreate... but we constantly reach beyond that toward individualism, and then back to communion with each other; recognition of the self as unique and then the rejoining of mutual minds, mutual spirits, to feel part of the whole again. It's all so amazing to me. 

The first week I shared a video of Bryson Andres playing electric violin on the streets of Spokane, Washington. Aside from his obvious talent for playing his instrument, I was vastly impressed with his ability to think beyond the traditional use of his talent; to arrange, play, record, and accompany various parts of the score he played without written music before him, while on the street, playing for strangers in the cold. And then there is that beauty that comes from sharing one's gift with equal opportunity, for free, for public consumption, for the joy of it. 

The second week I shared a video of a boy who can do amazing tricks with a ping pong ball. Theres nothing too terribly meaningful here except that for me, having a son who is only a few years younger than him, it's really hard to imagine the amount of concentration and extent of his understanding of physics that were required to do what he does. I hope he loves doing it (I can't imagine he'd very good at it if he didn't), and if he does how beautiful is it that he found such a thing to love, so early in his life, upon which he may build any number of rich futures. How beautiful it is that he has parents who see the talent and passion he has as a good thing, a thing worth nurturing.

This week's video is a little bit more straight forward. It's about physical and psychological awareness, about strength, reaction time and the amazing things a body can do.





*I don't think these amazing people will always show up here as videos from youtube, but right now I'm going through my reserve of them.