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I’LL PASS ON THE PITY PARTY

Thursday, October 1, 2020    
 
 
Aloha,

Stress, hypertension/high blood pressure, gout, overweight, and lots of other ailments; sprains, bursitis, a peculiar knee, eyes that squint, and noshing with dentures - you name it, that’s me. Declining weight loss, acquiring a fitter body, reading more, learning more, and being more effective – that’s me too.

What’s on your list of perils, and what’s on your list of corrective measures to curtail or to unleash?

Have you taken a personal inventory?

I’m not intimating you drill as deep as a 12-step recovery program might take you, but at least reach beneath your façade, beneath the superficial. You’ll encounter, I’m sure, your customized self-SWOT analysis – which is the effortless part, the stricter burdensome part being ‘what to do about it?’ which takes a few decades longer.

If you want to feel pity for yourself, fine, go ahead – but if you’re wanting to hear a genuinely woebegone story, consider this forlorn news I learned the other day: that tourist visits to Hawaii were down 98% in August compared to the previous year.

That’s a severe adjustment – which makes all my trouble in life and business seem so trifling in comparison.

Seriously, who could manage to survive, revive, and thrive again if, through no fault of their own, they had their business activity and income drop 98%?

It makes our bumps, gullies, oil-price volatility, and down-bubble cycles in our economy, politics, and public health seem almost trivial compared to that.

I miss my lovely Maui trips and would love to go again once opportunity resumes, if for no other reason (there are many, of course) than to support those gracious masters of hospitality; they have made my stays there so memorable and happy. Check out these 35 webcams.
It’s not just there where people are hurting – our own backyard is full of grit and heroics and cracks for people to fall through.

Whether we are spending time away or at home, we need to remember we are not the only ones hurting – not the only ones who’ve seen values decline, businesses evaporate, occupations rendered irrelevant or obsolete. Dig deep, and you’ll likely find skills you’ve not used in a while; you’ll summon your ability to compromise, economize, and sacrifice that you’ve done before – because we all have. Back then, it was the reality of being young and poor, starting out on a shoe-string budget, or told NO so often that we thought our head would explode.

But are heads didn’t explode.

We didn’t shrink away.

We didn’t give up.

We benefited from the kindness of strangers.

Now is a time, more than ever before, where we need to be a little muted, nonabrasive, kindhearted, and more generously freehearted in our words and in our deeds – because everyone needs it more than ever before.

We live, substantially, in a caring society with lots of social safety nets to catch people. But that society is not government policy – that society is us, colleagues, and neighbours. Friends. And strangers.

This is more than giving someone a thank-you wave in traffic.

Wave more …

Mahalo.




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