NEW DIRECTION

🔴🟠🟡🟢🔵🟣⚫️ NEW DIRECTION Ed. No. 179

- RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS

HELPING HANDS

(or How to Succeed in Life by Really Trying)

Daniel Radcliffe as J. Pierrepont Finch

in the 2011 New York production of

“How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”

(Been there done that.)

PIC: IMDb

The other day I saw a middle aged couple give a young homeless man about a half of their shopping just at the bus stop across the road from Woolies at Town Hall, Sydney. The middle aged couple then quite deliberately stood there and actively engaged the young street rough sleeper in conversation. Then, after this couple had left another homeless man came sniffing around the cache of food to which the first young man responded by rabbiting his treasure of food away behind him.

This all got me to thinking about the inequality in our world.

And this in turn took me back to my visit to New York in 2011.

It was my good fortune to be able to see on Broadway Daniel Radcliffe's full of life starring performance in the stage musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”.

Six rows from the front you could see the sweat flying off him.

The final film in the Harry Potter series had only just been released.

Daniel Radcliffe was riding the wave of success in terms of wealth and fame.

Top of the world and just 22 years of age.

And I guess that this is just one example of the disparity between the haves and the have nots in our world. Let me be clear that I'm not denying Daniel his grace.

He's certainly received the "Liquid Luck" in his life!

And good on him.

What was so incongruent though was the experience I'd just had around the corner before the Show eating dinner. I had found myself in what looked to be the worst McDonalds in the world starting with the hamburgers and the condition of the “blue light” lit loo - disgusting . But far worse than that looking around gave me the very quick realisation that this was a venue frequented by young drug addicts. They were huddled in two or three lost groups closed down isolated within inside themselves. My first thought was this is reminiscent of the scene in the movie Midnight Cowboy where John Voight’s character Joe Buck went into a New York cafe and a young woman was having a kind of extreme disconnected episode.

She had a child with her.

It was tragic film making mirroring what life is for far too many.

The question came to me why is there so much misery, injustice and inequality in our world?

The whole question is just so overwhelming but I wonder if an answer has something to do with firstly having a healthy relationship with ourselves as individuals? If we knew and loved ourselves better we’d each have the solid foundation to experience the joy in our lives and be better able to connect and share more positively with others. Wouldn’t we?

Shouldn’t we all be putting ourselves on this journey towards better understanding ourselves? There's plenty who'll say..."What's to learn about me that I don't already know?".

The response I have learned is OMG P-L-E-N-T-Y.

The discovery about oneself is a continuum... It is the journey of a lifetime.

Isn't the best random act of kindness anyone can do for themselves and others, as Socrates said, is to "Know Thyself"? - Neville Williams