Expect the Unexpected

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Louise Gallagher

Ellie

He is walking towards us at the park where Ellie, my golden retriever, and I walk. It is quiet. Not many people out on this blustery January afternoon, even though the weather is uncharacteristically warm. I am conscious of Ellie’s tendency to want to greet everyone we pass and so I shorten her leash and hold on tightly.

As I have made a commitment to greet everyone we pass on the trail, I smile as we approach each other and say, “Hello.”

I’m not expecting much of a response. He doesn’t look like he’s in the mood for greetings of the Ellie kind so I am surprised when he stops and says hello back and asks if he can say hello to Ellie who is straining at her leash.

I smile and let her bound over to him. At 11, Ellie doesn’t know she’s a senior citizen. She leans into his legs, squirms and groans and makes noises as if to say, “Oh thank you thank you. No one ever pays attention to little ole’ me.”

Ellie is a con artist.

The man laughs, takes off his gloves and rubs her haunches. Ellie is in heaven.

“She loves people,” I tell him.

“I can tell,” he says and then he bends down and looks her in the face and rubs her ears. He looks up at me. “I used to have a retriever. She wasn’t as big as this one. I had to let her go last July.” And he rubs Ellie’s head some more.

She has become uncharacteristically quiet, as if she knows exactly what is needed without my having to remind her to calm down. “It was hard. My wife passed away just before that. Been married 48 years. Kids are all moved away.” And he stands up and looks at me and says, “Not many people stop to say hello out here.”

He places one hand on Ellie’s head as if in benediction. “Thank you,” he says before walking away.

And I don’t know if he’s talking to Ellie or me or his pet who is no longer here or his wife who passed away.

And it doesn’t matter. In our encounter I am reminded. Expect the unexpected. There’s always an opportunity to stop and make a difference, even when you least expect it.

Doing the hard

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Louise Gallagher

It began with the effortless. Have coffee with a young man, Des, who inspired by my TEDxCalgary talk in November, wanted to chat about volunteering and making a difference. Chatting with Des I felt awed by his commitment to volunteering, and to creating opportunities to raise funds for the charities he supports. And, I came away with a great idea for my daughters and I to make a difference together (more on that at another date!)

Meeting with Des I was reminded — giving is receiving.

An hour of my time and one green tea latte later and I came away excited about how powerful we are as human beings to create positive change in the world.

The hard didn’t come until later. A conversation with a cohort lead to confirmation of comments someone else is making that cast a negative light on something I was involved with. I was hurt. Angry. Saddened. Confused. And when I’m confused, my victim’s voice gets active… What’s in it for them to attempt to disparage me? Why do they…? Why can’t they…? In my victim’s place I put my focus on ‘them’ and take it off where it belongs — on what I’m doing, thinking, saying.

I had an option. Let those thoughts eat away at my peace of mind. Let myself become embroiled in, ‘how could they’, ‘well I never’, “wait ’til I get even’ thinking, or breathe deeply and consciously focus my thinking on creating what I want more of in this world — peace, harmony, love, joy.

It wasn’t easy. I wanted to lash out. To stamp my feet and scream about the injustice, not to mention wrongness, of what is being said. But, to do that would undermine my integrity. It would create disharmony in my world, and thus, send out ripples of discord to the world around me.

And I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to create shockwaves of unease. I want to create ripples of kindness.

And so I did the only thing I knew I could to make a difference within me. I meditated and held this situation in healing light.

What others do is never about me. What I do is about me. And I cannot do my best when I am focused on what other’s are doing. I can only do my best when I focus on me and accept, my best is good enough.

Fighting fire with fire only engulfs me in the flames. Healing torched ground takes tender loving care and so, I opted to cast light on the darkness, to shed love on the pain. I feel better when I put my energy on creating a world of difference within me. A difference that I intend to let ripple out in waves of kindness as I move through my day.

Making a difference isn’t about what I do. It’s about the choices I make to create a world of difference in and around me. And sometimes, that requires my letting go of the easy and doing ‘the hard’.

Be Flexible

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Louise Gallagher

When I awoke yesterday I didn’t know what the day had in store. It was my first, official, day of ‘not working at the shelter’ that wasn’t ‘holiday time’.

My thought was to make a difference to the environment by not driving my car and not spending any money.

And then, my friend Dave called. “What’s on your agenda today?” I asked him.

“I’ve got to pick up boxes.” He’s moving to Winnipeg at the end of the month and is in the throes of packing.

“Do you need a ride?” I asked. He lives downtown and has not seen the need for a car in years.

He did and I agreed to pick him up later in the day after I’d finished off a writing piece I’m doing for a company in Vancouver.

I quickly rethought my notion of not driving for the day — helping a friend trumps environmental footprint. Except, he called me back a few hours later to inform me he’d found a website that will deliver the boxes, the next day. No need to drive.

Good thing. Because in the process of going through the mail, I found the notice with the renewal form for my driver’s licence. It had expired on my birthday! Dec 9. I kinda had to go and get it renewed before I drove people around, don’t you think? And I kinda needed my daughter to drive me to the Registry Office to do it (how sweet is that? She gets to make a difference too!) No sense taunting the gods of roadfarers, or the police, driving on an expired licence. For some reason, in my mind, there’s a difference between knowingly driving on an expired licence and accidentally doing so.

No licence meant it was a good day to save the planet. Not a good day to go out and about. And while I would miss dropping in on the rehearsal of a group of clients from the homeless shelter who were preparing for their world-premiere of a radio play they’d written as a collective, which I had also planned on doing, I definitely didn’t need to risk getting a ticket.

Back to Plan A.

Make a difference to the planet today.

Make a difference in someone’s life tomorrow. And even better – go to the dress rehearsal of the play too!

Another lesson learned — when making a difference, be flexible. You never know what life will deliver up.

Being present

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Louise Gallagher

I thought it would be easy, this making a difference. And while doing things to make a difference is easy, I am finding myself challenged to stay in the consciousness of being present at all times, watching for opportunities to present themselves, so that I can effortlessly turn up and make a difference with grace.

There are moments when ‘the difference’ appears without any prompting. Standing on the deck at the ferry terminal in Nanaimo, watching the ship roll into the dock, I see a mother and father and their two sons. All decked out in Canuck hockey jersey’s, the mother is taking a photo of her boys against the backdrop of the harbour.

“Would you like a photo of all of you?” I ask.

And she smiles gratefully, shows me how to operate the camera and moves back to join her family for the photo. It was the same with the trio of women on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery later that afternoon when Alexis and I were leaving the gallery. “Would you like a photo together?” I asked and they gratefully accepted.

And the panhandler sitting on the sidewalk. It was easy to give him coins, just as it was easy to drop a $5 bill into the open guitar case of a busker. Making the decision to give to people on the street is a simple case of deciding to share what coin I have.

But, what of all those other times I didn’t notice? That’s where I find myself challenged in this process. Those chunks of time where I am moving through my day on auto-pilot, not really connecting to the world around me.

I notice it in other’s eyes as well. Walking along the street, intent on getting to where they’re going, they pass me by, engaged in some other mission than being right there where they’re at, looking for opportunities to be the difference they want to see in the world.

It is not the ‘making a difference’ that is the challenge. It’s the being present, being in the moment that eludes me as I catch myself drifting away, sealing myself off from the world passing me by, moving through my day by rote.

Yes, it is in being present that I must be different.