There's No Room For Man-Pleasing

I'm listening to: "Elysium" by: Hans Zimmer

I have a Honda Metropolitan.  I love it.  I drive it a lot.  I live in Florida if you haven't figured that out yet.  But I love my scooter, and my favorite drive is from Fort Lauderdale Beach to South Beach.  Just driving down the road with the sand and my friend,  the Atlantic Ocean next to me. It's a beautiful, just captivating journey.  I really enjoy it.  It frees me to think about life, and ideas, and this project.  

A big part of this project, is finding the organization and people that we are going to link up with in Swaziland and work with.  Well, that big question has finally been answered.  Susan Creamer, of swazichild.com has welcomed us, and allowed us to be a part of the amazing organization that she has started.  She is amazing, always giving, and the crazy thing is she is located in Fort Lauderdale Florida, (when she isn't in Swaziland) about 5 miles from where I live. So amazing!  So, we have met and talked, shared stories, become friends... it's beenso  amazing.  It will be so great to work with her and all of these children and families. 

This project is so important and it means so much to me, to her, to us. 

As I was driving, I was just thinking about, how a lot of our lives, we spend so much time doing things for... credit. And yes, I know none of us want to say that we do, but it's so true.  We want people to notice us, look at what we are doing, approve of us, say that we are good people. We want other people to think highly of us, and tell their friends good things, amazing things about us.  Could we be so focused on people? our peers? of course. To your face?...no not at all, but secretly deep down, deep inside, we all want to be liked.... to be in demand....  none of us want to be outcasts, no matter how artsy fartsy we think we are.  Secretly we want the approval of man....

These thoughts made me remember to some conversations that Susan and I had.  It's hard to think that these people and these kids in Swaziland are just fighting for their lives, literally, trying to stay alive, trying to find clean water, they aren't caught up in the silly games that we play here.  They are just honest with themselves, whether its good or bad.  Honest.  We can learn so much from other people.  One thing I'm thinking about now,  is that we are going over to help them, give them hope and so on, raise awareness here in the States, make an impact for them, help them. But I think..... they will be helping us so much more.... without saying a single word to us, they will help us... make us better people.... maybe life isn't about making sure that my supervisor things highly of me, maybe its about something greater than that.... maybe life lessons can be learned at the strangest of places at the strangest times. I am learning that on this journey of life, we are wasting our time trying to secretly gain this "approval", this "acceptance".  If we could just focus on something greater, instead of that.... maybe we would see humanity upgrade to 2.0... 

just maybe... or maybe it was just a silly scooter ride...