Bo­bie Lee-Dixon

Okay, take a deep breath, close your eyes and say it with me: "The sky is blue, the grass is green." Now ex­hale slow­ly,slow­ly..slow­ly. Open your eyes and look around you. Do you feel re­laxed, com­fort­ed and just hap­py to be alive? If your an­swer is yes, then good for you, be­cause life is what you make it. But if your an­swer is no, then you need to start count­ing your bless­ings. Do you have both arms and both legs? Can you speak, hear, touch, taste, swal­low? So you get where I'm go­ing with this. It's been said to us so many times be­fore and it does seem cliche–count your bless­ings be­cause there are oth­ers who are worse off than you. Yes we know this, but do we re­al­ly take heed of it?

Of­ten times we quar­rel, com­plain, and ob­sess over sit­u­a­tions that we can change. While there are those liv­ing in this world with so lit­tle, that a choice is like a lux­u­ry be­cause they usu­al­ly have to set­tle for what lit­tle they own. So you may not have "yam, fish and mut­ton" every­day, but you can still have a meal–some have noth­ing to eat. You may not have a Sealy Pos­ture­pedic mat­tress on which to sleep, but for some, the dirt is where they lay their heads. You may not have fan­cy cloth­ing, some on­ly wish to be cov­ered in some­thing. The truth is, there are peo­ple suf­fer­ing all over the world, some­times even right in your own com­mu­ni­ty. Hun­dreds of ba­bies and chil­dren die every­day of mal­nu­tri­tion and their par­ents, help­less, are forced to watch this hap­pen.

Give a lit­tle

Some of us are so stingy–nev­er want­i­ng to do­nate a cent for any­thing. Well, do you know that all the mon­ey you have won't go to the grave with you, it can on­ly buy you a nice cas­ket. So while you are here, why not put your mon­ey to good use? It's not much, and I promise it won't hurt to do it. I un­der­stand that some­one not hav­ing is not your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, but still we ought to be our broth­er's keep­er. Any­way you don't have to give a mil­lion bucks, just give some­thing. All those clothes and shoes you don't wear any­more, do­nate them to char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions. For every dol­lar you spend save one and make it your "some­one cares dol­lar." Feel good to know you just fed a child or clothed some­one. Don't be a Scrooge, don't wait un­til Christ­mas, or oth­er spe­cial oc­ca­sions to give. Through­out the year just give. I promise you, you will find joy in giv­ing.