TED is a small non-profit dedicated to Ideas Worth Spreading, and Jamie Oliver is their 2010 prize winner. I watched his presentation a few weeks ago, and it lit more sparks in me about what we can each do to LEARN, to "save lives," beginning with our own. As I've watched Anderson Cooper and so many more covering the stories, the real dramas in Haiti over the last 6 weeks, I've been profoundly reminded of how easily distracted we are with so much, in our world of "so much." When Anderson Cooper relayed how tears would well up in his eyes at random moments, such as climbing a stairwell, how people he met clasped his hand hard and warmly, looking right into his eyes, my heart was touched by the beautiful humanity we are, when love is visible as we live. Living love, for me, now also means understanding this miracle of our design as energy and matter. In Jamie Oliver's video, he shares a moment with friends he made in West Virginia. You're killing your children, he says to one friend, a mother whose eyes fill with tears as she sits facing him, touching, listening intently. We can change this, he says. Ignorance is what kills. Why do we pay more attention to killing than we do "saving," healing, learning?
I think of my Dad and his simple appreciation of all life offered. He had such an appreciation of the gifts of life, and how the truth of life was in the living, the humanity before the abundance of " things." I've been reading Kathy Oddenino's first book again - The Joy of Health (1989), as we prepare to reprint it. The information is more important now than ever. As we work with the book I am reminded, Our thoughts are living energy. Awareness is not static, but it is a fluid sense of knowing self. I'm eager to begin this year's focus of classes on The Joy of Health, because this is lifetimes' worth of growth potential, and, as Sean Penn said on Larry King last night referring to helping Haiti, this is a turning point - we can make a difference NOW that will affect all of our relationships, as a country, as nations, as a world. Beyond that, my/our choices affect our past, present, and our future.
I'm reminded NOW to "smell the roses." To love. We are energy. What gifts.
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