Life's the greatest teacher

Yesterday I took a bus to go somewhere and the passenger who was sitting next to me was chatting with me, though not to my liking. But he asked me a question, "Do you always travel alone?" to which I responded, "Yes." The passenger asked me why and I told the person that it gives me time to reflect on the things of life. Ever so often we are so busy thinking about what we are doing, what we have done, or what we are going to do. But, do we ever take time off for ourselves? Do we ever take the time to reflect on the things that happen around us to see what we can learn from them? You know, just a few hours ago while I was taking a shower, the soap slipped out of my hands and fell. Every time I tried to grab it, it would go further away. So I thought, "wow, look at that!" For just a few seconds I couldn't get a hold of the slippery soap. And I thought, "What can I learn from that?" What came to mind immediately was "words". We speak sometimes amiss. Like the soap, words may slip out of our mouths, but when we reflect on what we've said we realize that it was a slip of the tongue. The problem is that words can be dangerous. Slippery words can be very dangerous. They may get us into trouble if we're not careful. So, if we mistakenly say something we should quickly correct it before the little flame that it may light burns a whole city. You know, when the soap fell, I had to bend over towards the floor to pick it up. So when we perceive that our slippery words may affect someone or change the status quo negatively, we should humbly do whatever we can to deal with it. As I've said, life's the greatest teacher! Isn't it?

Be Helpful

One of the most important values of life that many may not give much importance to is being helpful. Earlier today, I needed to make some photocopies of a few pages from a book, but the copy machine in my office wasn't working very well. So I went to a different department and asked the secretary there to do me the favor. She was a bit busy and asked me to wait a while.  So I did. While she was making the copies, she had to take various pauses to answer the telephone, send faxes, etc. Then she commented to me that she was really busy with so many things to do, but for her it wasn't a problem making the copies for me because she believes in helping. She said she loves to help whenever she has the oportunity to do so. But she also commented that not everyone is like that. And this is so true. We come across people like that ever so often who are not disposed to helping any one. How much would it cost you to reach out to someone who needs your service or needs a little of your time? Even if we have a lot  to do, a few seconds of our time can make a difference for someone and eventually for us. We should remember that being helpful would go a long way for us and for the person. Being helful makes the world go round. We need it. Everyone needs it at some time. Let's be helpful when we can.