How much time do you spend improving the area around you? I'm not going to go brow beating you into doing community service, so breath easy. However, I do want to remind everyone that a single person can change so much.
We rarely know the impact that we have on our envirnment, not the landscape like trees and oceans, I mean like the people that dwell around us. Being happy and taking time to greet people warmly can be the biggest thing. So can being attentive to someones needs and giving them what they need regardless if they can pay you back.
Being aware of how we impact those around us is a big, big deal. If you do not hold the door for the guy behind you and it slams in his face, you did not mean to insult him, you were just in a rush. However, he may have been feeling already isolated, maybe even suicidal and that one door slamming in his face may have been the last straw to make him feel completely invisible. Things like this sound far fetched and petty until you read about them in the newspaper. Then you wonder, what happened to that guy?
This is part of my point though, in our community (LGBT) we know who one another are. We are sensitive to one another and can see habits forming and bad attitudes creeping up. We can spot depression in one another and addiction. We can see when one of our partnered friends is beginning to stray sexually. We know all this because a little part of ourselves is in every member of the LGBT community whether we know them or not, hence our "gaydar's".
But if we take that time to listen to the stranger, to invite the feelings and emotions that make us uncomfortable, to step out of our little bubbles, our communities can and will be drastically different. This really goes so deep but is so completely simple. Its what a community is suppose to be. It's giving a crap about the person next to you whether or not you think they are good people. It's not judging because you don't like to be judged, its helping because sometimes you need help too. It's doing the right thing because there are times when you need someone else to do the right thing with you (ever lose you wallet and the money get returned with it?).
I have been told that this is utopia type thinking and its impossible, but I hate that word and don't believe in impossible. I believe in me and you and God and that everything is possible.
With Love
Jeff Utnage
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