Peace Begins with One Person

On the train today I was reading an essay from This I Believe II and came across an essay that truly inspired me, so much so that I had to put the book down and really reflect and what I had read. It may be because of my AmeriCorps service and how closely it relates to it what I do but I feel that this needed to be shared with as many people as possible. So read on:

Peace Begins with One Person 

By: Ivory Harlow 

"I serve coffee at a counter-style dinner in Texas. I often see a look of isolation in my customers' eyes. They come in the front door, wander to the counter, pick up the menu, and look around the diner for something they can't short-order: a connection.

      In an age of online chat, online shopping, and even online school, it's no wonder people come into the diner starving for human connection. Most of my customers can remember a time when the milkman came to their front door. As I serve up their eggs and bacon, they offer updates on their grandchildren. They ask me about the happenings in my life. 

     One day, I walked to the back of the smoking section to pass around a fresh pot of coffee. There was a woman who had been sitting in a corner booth for at least three hours. She asked me, "How much is just one breakfast taco?" I told her I didn't know, that I'd never served just one by itself. Going back to the kitchen I thought about her rotted teeth and tired eyes, and how she'd consumed enough caffeine for three people already. I offered her a free pancake breakfast. I fibbed that it was left over from an order I had messed up. She asked to borrow bus fare and promised to return and pay me back. I handed over tip money from my apron pocket. She smiled a ragged grin on her way out the front door. 

     Three weeks later she returned my two dollars. She had gotten a job and a friend's couch to sleep on. She offered to buy me breakfast on my break!

      This kind of thing gets me wondering if something as simple as a short stack of pancakes can bring about a small shift in society. I'll go even further: Can one act of friendliness start to generate peace? I believe it can. Peace begins with one person but spreads like warmed syrup. When I connect with my neighbors, they return it in kind. 

      So I believe in friendliness and an open ear. For me, it starts with making eye contact when I pour coffee and ask my customers, "How you doing?" and then listen to their answer. 

    My job is to take care of customers as the counter in a small Texas diner, but I also believe we're in this world to take care of each other." 

Ivory Harlow began working as a waitress after a tour of duty in the US Air Force. She is studying for a bachelor's degree in business administration. Harlow lives in San Antonio with her husband and dog, and she enjoy writing poems and nonfiction. 

- pg 100. This I Believe II. Edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman. 

Try something new

Be daring,
be different,
be impractical,
be anything that will assert
integrity of purpose and
imaginative vision
against the play-it-safers,
the creatures of the commonplace,
the slaves of the ordinary.
-Sir Cecil Beaton

Between my 1st and 2nd year of college I attend my first NACURH Conference in Oshkosh, WI, an organization that in a large way would come to define my college career and my views on leadership. Paul Wesselmann, who founded the Ripples Project, spoke about the huge impact of small actions. He sends out a weekly inspirational e-mail with some short quotes and brief stories the pushes you to think about the ordinary in a new way. For the next 3 years I largely deleted these e-mails without opening then, I thought they weren't that important to my daily life, I had more important things to read. Yet, I never unsubscribe and I'm glad that's the case.


I recently started reading them again and am learning they apply more and more to my everyday work and involvement in AmeriCorps and my post-college night. If nothing else they make me think and I suggest you subscribe it's a quick read and a good pick me up on Monday. 


"Your unique and fabulous creative talent is desperately needed.  The people around you, indeed the people of the world are counting on you to step up and deliver magnificence.  If you're shirking in the shadows, afraid that someone will judge you or ridicule you or shame you, let me address that fear:  someone indeed might judge, ridicule, and/or shame you.  AND I'm quite sure there is someone who may just as loudly encourage you, applaud you, and yes, even celebrate you." 


If this isn't motivation to get out and make a difference or do something different, I don't know what is. It certainly inspired and motivated me through my Monday and lead to a fairly productive day and powered me through my Tuesday. Carry this through the week with you and hopefully help to propel you into a year of changing the world that will allow you to "deliver magnificence."

Challenge: Greening my life...

So I've committed at least 40 hours a week to fighting poverty, but as a student of both International Studies and Geography it's hard to focus all my energy on just one issue. There's too much going on in the world and everything it too interconnected to only focus on one issue, so I wanted my challenge myself to take on another issue a little more directly. Start strong this week and see what happens from there.

Over Twitterverse this article from YES! Magazine caught my eye: "10 Ways to Change Your Life" and I figured I could take on a bit of a challenge for myself this week. I'm not following the article exactly, but I figured there are some ways I could make my life a little more environmentally friendly. One of my roommates senior year really pushed shoved certain aspects of environmentalism down our throats, so much so that we recycled about 3 times as much trash as we produced (which also might speak to how much my roommates and I drank senior year.)

So naturally, when looking for an apartment in Chicago I was a bit nervous about the whole recycling thing, my conscious and my senior year roommate would have not let me feel good about throwing anything away, thankfully my current roommate felt just about the same way. But I'm not perfect and I wish I could contribute a bit more to this cause, even if I'm only one person if I'm going to preach the message I should take a little more action day to day. Yes, I'm only one person but movements like this have to start somewhere.

So over the next week, I'm going to take a few steps to green up my life which I hope will result in some more long term positive changes. Thankfully, I already take the train and bus everywhere so my carbon footprint is a lot lower than usual, but I think the largest obstacle is some organization behind my life. So here are my steps I plan on taking over the next week:

1. Eat all the food in my kitchen before I buy more. So I waste A LOT of food. I've thrown away more mold covered food since I've moved in here, I never realized how much more 4 guys ate than just the two of us. So, I am not allowing myself to go grocery shopping until I empty my fridge and pantry. From here I can reevaluate what I buy and how I utilize the food I buy. Long term goal: reduce food waste. Short term goal: cook some interesting things.
2. Take out all of our recycling. This is more of a personal cleansing thing and it helps the environment.
3. Organize my room. I want to reduce how much I consume and the first step is to take inventory of what I already have. Long term goal: reduce how much I own. Short term goal: Clean my room.
4. Install a dual-flush converter on my toilet that my friend graciously provided me with. This might break my toilet, they say I don't need tools to install it. I don't believe it. Long term goal: reduce water usage. Short term goal: don't break my toilet.
5. Recycle some clothes. We over consume and we over buy. So I need to figure out where I can cut down, maybe realize I'm not as attached to some t-shirts as others and reduce and reuse as much stuff as I can instead of letting it collect dust.

So there's my ambitious week. I'll let you know how it goes one week from now, unless I break my toilet then maybe you'll hear about this one sooner rather then later.

Peace out!

Think about it.

"It is amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn't matter who gets the credit." - Harry S. Truman

I wish more people could live by this motto. What do you think the current state of our nation would be? Think about it and imagine it. Ideally we're all working together toward common goals. It doesn't matter which political party wrote the bill or who got to be in power, everyone could share the credit equally and enjoy doing so. That seems too good to be true and is highly idealized, but it's a wish.

Internationally this would be a dream. War - meh. Climate change - combated. Nuclear weapons - racing to do what? I guess that's why I always struggled through those more intense war based discussion in some of my International Studies classes. Can't was all get along? It seemed so easy and the natural solution to so many problems. Sadly the complexity of the world and people's egos don't allow that to happen.

I don't have much of an opinion on Harry Truman or what type of president he was and the quote isn't really tied to the man at all. I think I stumbled upon it one day when I was looking up leadership quotes and in every leadership position I've held, I have tried to live by it. Junior year I repeated it to my RHA Exec Board over and over again and we won a national award because of it. It was never about individual glory or ho specifically did what, but looking at the bigger picture what we could accomplish together as a group working towards a common goal. To be honest it was beyond amazing.

Now, faced with overwhelming issues of poverty on a daily basis, I find myself thinking of this quote a lot. So many actions have been taken that have put my clients in these situations just to make a point. Their unemployment running out? Part of a larger policy decision because someone wanted to screw someone else over and get noticed for that. Imagine where we would be if they had worked together. If it was no longer about who got what, but instead what the collective achieved. Lately on a national scale it hasn't been that impressive. But scaling it down to the 40+ college students I have the honor to work with daily it's amazing. I work in a place where we are all working together towards the greater collective good. It is never about what one individual does and none of those students seek out credit, no matter how much they deserve it. I find it so inspiring and we're accomplishing a surprising amount in this epic fight against poverty. Something I learn more and more everyday that is less about one individual.

I don't know if I said much of anything just now. But think about it. Step back from your life and imagine how truly amazing it would be if everyone could honestly say "it doesn't matter who gets the credit."

A literary adventure

Embarking on a little project. Check out the blog and the original post here:  http://26booksinoneyear2011.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/matt-is-getting-started/

Oh hi. So here I am. Alex gave me the password so I guess I’m on this thing too and embarking on the journey. I love reading it’s a passion of mine and I think words can take you so many different places that your imagination just runs wild. Growing up my mom always told us to turn off the TV, we could read instead. I am forever grateful for that rule. Because of that and the countless numbers of books I thus read as a child, I have a dangerous imagination and it can take me anywhere. Fiction or non-fiction has the exact same effect, those words open up a whole new world of possibilities.

The interesting thing is that I have never actually sat down and recorded what I have read so that will make this interesting on my end and that is why I jumped on this blog, because reading is something I am passionate about and so hopefully keeping up with this will be no problem.

Will I probably read more than 26 books over the course of this year? My guess is yes (I’m already almost through my first two), but it will be fun nonetheless.

A few things about me and reading:
1. I have to finish a book once I make it past the first page. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis took me 2 years to read. It was a short book, it put me to sleep with every page I turned and yet I felt incomplete until it was done.
2. I am often reading 2 books at one time. Currently on: naked by David Sedaris and In Defense of Food by Micheal Pollon.
3. I will not be making any sort of list in advance, but I will be keeping track as I go. The books that spark my interest often change and I don’t want to limit myself to 26 when there are still thousands of books I have yet to discover and hundreds yet to be written this year.

On that note, my first 4 books will definitely be naked by David Sedaris, In Defense of Food by Micheal Pollon, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin and This I Belive II edited by Jay Allison & Dan Gediman. I only know this because I currently have all these books in my possession and they are in my to read pile.

Well cheers to a great literary adventure!

Think about it.

"It is amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn't matter who gets the credit." - Harry S. Truman

More on that later. 

Welcome to 2011!

Really living
is when a human being chooses
to awaken from their comfy trance
of resignation and circumstance
and step into their destiny,
their purpose, their freedom,
their possibility.
-Judy Morris

It's a new year. I don't think that really means it's a time to make a resolution. Who sticks to those anyways? I always thought they were dumb and never really made one mainly because it didn't interest me. Hey how you make up something that you don't really care about doing and forget about it in a week. Are you really committed to doing something you mentioned off hand because someone ask you, possibly while drunk, what you were committed to changing? What are you going to do with that?

So use the new year as a chance, maybe to reexamine where you are in your life and what you are doing. I woke up a few weeks ago and realized simply how pathetic I was being and made a choice not to be so pessimistic. It took work, but it was a choice I was ready to make. Running everyday is not something I could do right now, I mean I could but I don't want to right now and it's a resolution I have made at least 3 times before. I don't like running in the cold so it's a stupid thing to commit to right now. There's  my difference. So I'm going to focus on little choices that I think can change my outlook, my approach to life or simply how I live everyday. Not sure what they are going be yet but I'll keep you updated.

Here's to a great 2010 and an even greater 2011!