Ok, so life can be difficult.... horrible.... shitty. Just generally not a lot of fun and kind of pointless day to day suffering. Pathetic, I know, but this is the way I have been feeling lately. Turned down for another job today. For the first time in my life I am finding it difficult to find an income. At all. I have no money coming in. I have no immediate prospect of money coming in. And this is very scary, since I also have no savings.
This unprecedented turn of events has been a brutal blow to my already almost non-existent self-esteem. So I am wallowing in the absolute plushness of my own self-pity when I decide to clean out the inbox of my Hotmail account. (Hey, a girl's gotta stay busy somehow. Slitting one's wrists - though good for taking up a bit of time - is also a trifle permanent.)
Now - just as another little piece of background to what is to follow - I am not exactly the type of person that passes on those 'if you don't send this email to 10 other people before noon tomorrow, you will be doomed to a life of back luck' kind of things you get in your inbox from time to time (particularly if you know a lot of the type of people that send those sort of emails).
So, while I am cleaning out my inbox, I stumble across two of these sappy, asinine things, which would, in a different frame of mind, prompt me to hit the delete button immediately. Don't get me wrong, I am not completely heartless. If I had known who these were from, I may have sent some pithy reply. But these were not meant for me. They were addressed to an email address with a single character difference to mine. I could tell this by the trail of previous recipients (another trait that ticks me off, by the way).
Anyway, with the recent experiences that life had provided me, I somehow had a very different - very visceral - response. I think I will just reproduce the emails below, (with the relevant identifying bits removed, of course) and let it speak for itself - for a minute:
$20.00
Sometimes we just need to be reminded!
A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20.00bill. In the room of 200, he asked,
' Who would like this $20 bill? '
Hands started going up.
He said, ' I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.
He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill.
He then asked, ' Who still wants it? '
Still the hands were up in the air.
Well, he replied, ' What if I do this? '
And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe.
He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty.
' Now, who still wants it? '
Still the hands went into the air.
My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson.
No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value.
It was still worth $20.
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way.
We feel as though we are worthless.
But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value.
Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased,
you are still
priceless to those who DO LOVE you.
The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know,
but by WHO WE ARE and
WHOSE WE ARE.
You are special
-
Don ' t EVER forget it '
If you do not pass this on, you may never know the lives it touches, the hurting hearts it speaks to, or the hope that it can bring.
Count your blessings,
not your problems.
' And remember:
amateurs built the ark ..
professionals
built the Titanic.
If God brings you to it -
He will bring you through it.
That was one of two, the other was different but the same - you know what I mean. Ok, so we've all seen them, or a variation thereof. But I am telling you that the universe does speak to you, and in the weirdest ways. Today it spoke to me through a chain email.
The fact that I had let it sit in my inbox for weeks, and had chosen that moment to open it was about as serendipitous as it gets, and I felt it - like a weight being lifted from my shoulders.
As long as I just put my head down and keep going it will get better. Its as simple as putting one foot in front of the other, remembering to breath in and out every day and taking some time to share some of the good stuff around. And the good stuff doesn't cost you a penny.
So, in the epiphany that I was having about life, it became very important to pass on this little miracle - for trust me it was a miracle - to the person that had inadvertently provided it for me. Her email name is Kat, so it was to Kat that I addressed my message:
Hi Kat
You don't actually know me, I received your email in error. I think the person you were looking for isXXXlXXX@hotmail.com. You just forgot the 'l'.
I have let your email sit in my inbox for a while, since I didn't know who it was from, and have only just opened it while cleaning out my emails. I really felt the need to write you back and let you know that, even though you did not mean to send these emails to me (there was another that came at the same time), I have opened them at a time when I really needed the universe to tell me that there was some worth to my life.
I wont bore you with the details, but life has been a bit shitty lately, and very difficult to cope with. The sentiment in both of the mails, although intended for some-one else, and from some-one that I don't know, has reminded me of the value of life and what is really important at a time when I needed it most.
I just wanted to let you know that a simple thing like forwarding a kind of sappy and silly email can have a profound effect on another human being's life.
So thanks. And may the universe throw you a few little miracles when you need them most. :-)
Cheers
XXX
And then I sat down and started writing this blog.
I feel unbelievably better. Better than I have for days. Not just for having read the words, but also for having acknowledged the affect that they had on me to the person that sent them. I do not know this person, but Kat - thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Imagine the world we would live in then.
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Neurons works online from where ever she happens to be a the time.Learn how you can do it, too, by visiting www.neurons.ws or www.livedontwork.com.
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