The party is over. The waves of optimism leading up to and through the New Year have turned into a grudging resumption of day to day existence - as the world lumbers its way into yet another year of love, loss, triumph and tragedy..
If you have shelter and family or friends, then you ought to consider yourself among the most fortunate people in the world. You are privileged. Today and tonight, hundred of millions of people from Argentina to Zimbabwe and everywhere in between live without family, without education, without gainful employment and/or without health care. In your community, there are battered women with nowhere to go and no one to confide in personally. There are families living on food stamps and living in transition housing. Many people that you say 'hello' to everyday are quietly leading broken lives and living in the aftermath of broken dreams. In a nearby nursing home, there is more than one senior citizen who only wishes to die because no one has visited him or her for months - or maybe years.
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What should one do to ensure that 2011 is better than 2010? It is to begin doing volunteer work or to expand one's volunteer work on behalf of the less fortunate.
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Prior to his death in 1948, Mohandas K. Gandhi, who led his Indian nation to independence, touched on a universal human truth when he uttered, 'The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.'
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If you do not feed the hungry, clothe the destitute, educate the illiterate, comfort the sick or embrace and protect the battered woman, then it is quite possible that no one will.
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If you have a heart of compassion, please do not hide it from the world this year. For men, women and children are in need of your redemptive touch - and you are in need of theirs.
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Happy New Year.
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J Roquen