WHY TRY?

 

WHY TRY?

Over thirty years ago, a friend of mine got transferred to England. In an effort to cheer him up I started sending him a fax (remember those?) containing a positive quotation I got from a book written by Steve Forbes. The number of people grew and grew, some dropped off and others added on. Today my list has about 70 people on it. Some I have know for many years, some I have met once or twice and some I have never met. 

To find a quotation and send it to each one of these people takes me about fifteen minutes each morning. And often times I ask myself ‘why are you doing this’?

Many of you don’t know that I wrote a weekly newspaper column called “Letter From North America” for over twenty five years to over a hundred newspapers across the country. It was a satirical humor column about people and the government. I never made any money and just did it mainly as a mind exercise and a hobby. I stopped about ten years ago when I lost my sense of humor.

Now that I am retired, I find I want to start back again but newspapers are a dying venue, so I am looking for other approaches to explore. The writing keeps my mind busy and occupied with thinking of new things and how to express myself.

But let’s go back to the daily quotation discussion. These had to be turned in every Tuesday and often I would be struggling to find something to write about on Monday evening. In my opinion some of the dumbest stuff I have ever written in a hurry received the most comments. Recently during the move, I found a folder with some of these comments thanking me for what I had written. So, you never know if it helps or hurts.

These daily quotes are the same way, I can see each day who reads them or not or if they are opened and discarded. I am often tempted to say, ‘to hell with them’ and drop them from my daily list.

But I always go back to what happened when I was writing the columns. Is this person ignoring me on purpose or are they preoccupied with some matter for which I am totally ignorant?

So, I think about them and how they got on my list to begin with and then relent and keep on sending something to them each day as I have for all of these years.

You know we never really know what is going on in other people’s lives do we? Our lives are so busy and complicated that we can never see through to the real person and express our concerns and our prayers for their well being. It takes time and a lot of effort to see beyond the masks we wear in our daily lives. Sadly, we don’t get time until it’s too late to do anything about it and we live with a sense of regret for the for opportunities lost for the rest of our lives.

So no, I won’t quit sending these out each morning. It just may be the words you needed to hear.

That is why I try.

See you next week….Peary