Inspiration for the Holidays

I had nothing exciting happen today as I had a headache most of the day, slept in and finally got up to finish watching a couple of movies that I had to take back today. I was dreading watching them since I didn't feel very good and the end result meant that I would end up having to go into town to return the movies. However, I watched my first movie and it wasn't bad and I only had one more movie left and was thinking of not watching it before I returned it but decided that I might as well because I had this nagging suspicion that I would be missing out on something if I didn't go ahead and watch it. It was a good thing I did as I learned so much and would like to share that with you.
I watched a movie today titled "The Soloist" with Jamie Foxx in it. It is a movie about a homeless schizophrenic cellist and a New York Times journalist who comes into his life.
I have to say that this has been one of the most inspiring movies I have seen in quite some time. The main reason I am writing about this today is because in the movie the journalist happens to meet the homeless cellist while looking for his next story and decides to help him and write about it. He is so focused on helping the young man but only just enough as he doesn't want to be too involved in his life. I think that so many times we as a society are just like the journalist. We don't mind to help someone throughout the holidays or we don't mind to help them out the way that we want to help them out and yet all they really need is a friend, someone who will be involved in their life. If you befriend someone like that you have to be a true friend to them and actually take an interest in someone outside of yourself and that requires a lot of time that most of us aren't willing to give.
If you have ever reflected on your own life or heard other people talk, you most likely have heard yourself say or someone else say that you are happy that you don't have needy friends in your life or you can't be friends with a certain someone anymore because they are just too needy. We all have such busy lives and most of the time I think we feel very overwhelmed by trying to take care of our family's needs, our extended family's needs, etc and honestly if you are like me you are not even much of a people person. I can honestly say that as a whole I think the majority of Americans are stupid, self absorbed, money hungry people who are only concerned about how they look to everyone else. I have been looking for someone to help for quite some time but I seem to have this nagging about what kind of person I need to help and how much do I help them because I don't want to be too involved. After all, I have a daughter who requires an extremely large amount of my attention, a son that I am trying to get ready for college, a husband who works so much that I rarely see him and that doesn't even include my friend time and extended family time. I continue to ask God, how am I supposed to take on anymore? Society has been telling me for such a long time that it is okay to say no, sometimes you just have to. In reality though, we don't say no to meeting new people and trying to become friends with them. We join social networking sites so that we can meet more people and let people know more about who we are, we text people so that we can keep in touch because we are just too busy to pick up the phone and say hello or to go visit a friend or family member and yet we are constantly telling the world on our social networking sites how busy we are spending time with our friends and family. Do you see the irony?
As for me, I believe I will reach out to someone over the holiday season and if nothing else, just be a friend to them. It may be a homeless person, it may be an elderly person, it may be a child, it may just be someone that is already in my life that needs a friend and that means me being there for them, not to change them, not to help them though I think those things might come all by themselves but those things are not my mission but simply to make a friend who needs someone in their life.
Our community is growing tremendously and as a result of that I think that it is our responsibility as good upstanding citizens to take care of someone either by volunteering at a local charity, taking time out just to be nice to someone at work or church that people tend to shy away from and becoming their friend, or even just by being a BETTER friend, family member, etc. I don't know for sure what I will end up doing but I do know that I am going to start simply by being there for the people that are already in my life. Sometimes it is easier to help strangers than the people that you already know so well and yet sometimes those are the ones that need it the most. Just try to carry your generosity past the holidays and into your everyday life. This Thanksgiving I will be thanking God for the many people that he has put in my life and learning to appreciate that, instead of looking at it as a burden and just one more person that I have to participate in their life.
Happy Thanksgiving!