I Want to Hold your Hand

I want to hold your hand. I want to give you hope. I want to remind you of the strength you have that has kept you alive and productive your whole life. I want to tell you how much you mean to me. I want to thank you for the beauty you create and generate in this world. I want to take you on a mental vacation, so you can rest and repair and relax. Smile.

I want to make you laugh, tell you a joke. Here’s one. A guy is sitting at home when he hears a knock at the door. He opens the door and sees a snail on the porch. He picks up the snail and throws it as far as he can.
Three years later, there is a knock on the door. He opens it and sees the same snail. The snail says, "What the hell was that all about?"

I want to honor your intelligence and appreciate the small things you do everyday that go unnoticed like making dinner, doing the laundry, taking care of the children, the elders, the animals.

I want to dance around the room with you, play games, swim in the river, dip our toes in the ocean. I want to remind you to rest, take a nap if you can. Sing loud in the car because when I drive by you, it’ll make me laugh. I want you to know that singing helps your spleen and balances the left right hemispheres of your brain. I want to encourage you to hold a baby, visit an elder and tell them a story.

I want to thank you for taking care of yourself. I want to acknowledge how much you contribute to community, all the events, gardens, meals, festivals, celebrations, concerts, benefits and fairs that bring us all together to enjoy our time together. I want you to know that inspite of all the terrible awful things going on in the world that there is most definitely and surely good news. Here’s some of the headlines from the Positive News out OF Bolinas CA. American Indians Granted $760 million in a class action lawsuit settlement. Teachers without Borders connecting teachers Globally to make changes locals. Slow Food movement saves a Vermont. President Obama meets with 11 young climate activists. Huge Palm Oil Company in Indonesia promises to End Deforestation and 12 year old food grower Katie Tagliano from south Carolina donates 2 tons of vegetables to homeless

I want to tell you a story about a guy who photographs individuals who normally go unseen, enlarges them to extreme gigantic sizes and plasters them to buildings to surprise and enlighten neighborhoods devastated by war, crime and poverty. His name is JR and his the winner of the 2011 TED Prize which operates under the concept; one wish to change the world. One of JR’s most recent projects was to photograph Israelis and Palestinians in the same occupations, Taxi drivers, chefs, teachers, army and to put their photos side by side on the Walls which separate the two people. This artistic action has opened so many minds to the idea that we’re not that different.

Help others.org has a smile deck that you electronically shuffle and are given instructions for actions of kindness. Clubs are for people you know, hearts are for strangers, diamonds are acts for yourself and spades are for the world. This is a terrific exercise and could be contagious.

These are just a few of the sentiments and stories that are happening at this very moment in our world. The stories that never make the front page or even the last. The stories that we don’t see on TV or hear on the mainstream radio. We are a planet of 7 billion mostly good people and it is our daily interactions, of Art, compassion, love, kindness and simplicity that very much deserve our attention. We deserve to hear it, integrate it and spread it around. Here’s a challenge. See how long you can hold a smile without laughing. Pass it on.

You can finds links to these stories at my website. Sherryglaser.net