What If

I can’t find it in me today to recommend any product or entertainment to improve the quality of your life. There’s so much improvement to be made, in the fundamental quality of life for all of us. How do we think about that improvement -- much less make it happen -- when our hearts are broken?

In time, I’m sure we will think about it. And we’ll fight about it, and we’ll implement change that will enrage half the people. Maybe the change will be a gun control measure. Maybe it will be bulletproof glass at your kid’s school. Change looks different and different is scary. Different makes people take sides.

In the meantime, what if we were all on the same side? What if we pretended we were in my littlest one’s first grade classroom? Her teacher has a saying,”Be a bucket filler, not a bucket dipper.” It means the first graders are supposed to fill up each other’s buckets. They’re supposed to say nice things to each other, fill each other up versus tear each other down.  

There’s a lot wrong with our quality of life right now. The sense of  disconnection, alienation and invisibility that afflict many in modern life isn’t good for any in modern life. It leads to choices and consequences that are devastating, to all of us.

What if we were all on the side of bucket fillers? What if we tried to fill the buckets of as many people as we could every day? What would that do to the disconnected? The alienated? The invisible? What would that do to our own minds and hearts?