Where are our priorities?

 A friend of mine shared this video with me a couple of days ago. It's a 26 minute video but the gist is that while the West is seen as being the happiest, healthiest and wealthiest it has ever been there is a serious disconnect. We put so much time into collecting wealth, thinking it will make us happier or give us more freedom, we are losing ourselves and the democracy we once held so dear is deteriorating. We are disconnected from each other, our family and what makes us happy.
Why has wealth become so important and being a community so unimportant. Since the 50 random acts of kindness challenge started and I have been more aware of giving I have noticed I can make myself happier, just by smiling at someone. It seems that a life spent accumulating and hording instead of sharing is meaningless. Why do we always need more and more? Why are we never happy with what we have? Why is greed held on such a pedestal?

This year I am hoping to move toward running our house more simply and giving my kids memories based on nature instead of material things and places. Honestly this will be a bit of a challenge for me and I will have to shift my mindset, and let go of a lot of things my ego thinks are important (though my consciousness knows it isn't).

Happy Sunday!

50 Random Acts for Warren

A co-worker of mine has started an anywhere event on Facebook in honor of her late husband. He passed away in the Spring and she wanted to do something to commemorate what would have been his fiftieth birthday. It started on December 31 as an invite to the friends to do fifty random acts of kindness before her husband's birthday comes around in May. She has left the invitation open and today, while typing this there are 445 people who have responded yes. That is 22,250 RAK's!!

I did a couple myself today but I didn't really keep track and am not sure if I should count the coffee gift cards as one together or each, I think I will do them together.
I bought 5 Tim Horton's gift cards and handed out to various people. Among them a very frazzled looking mother at Costco, a dad who had his daughter and foster daughter at Costco and a truck with a Chive sticker in the window (KCCO!!). I also collected carts in the Costco parking lot with a delightful elderly fellow. The carts were spilling out into the roadway after the snow and it would have caused havoc. I smiled at all the grumpy looking people I saw and even got a few sincere smiles back.

I don't know if I will post every RAK I do but I will do a weekly post on the project because today I was in a great mood and I know it was because I was because of this.

Join us and do something, a smile can change the mood of a whole day, shovel a bit more, take a minute and offer to help load someone's groceries or buy a cup of coffee. There are a ton of websites with ideas if you're stuck.
Here is another blog written by someone else doing this project 50 for Warren.

Danielle never set out to do this for attention or to become a movement but in 4 days there are (now) 449 people from around the world committed, a TV interview set up and she has been contacted The Weather Network. She wanted to honor something her husband was actively working on and has done so much more good than she ever though.
Here is a link to the event if you want to check it out or get Danielle's story: Warren's 50th.