Most of us want to make a positive difference in the world. We hear about people running races to find a cure for a childhood disease or wearing pink to raise awareness about the devastating effects of breast cancer.

There’s clothing drives, food drives and fund raising efforts being held all over the world to combat hunger and homelessness. Here in our community, organizations raise thousands of dollars to help those in need.

Those efforts are worthwhile and definitely needed.

There is a way, however, we could make the world a little better place, and it only takes two minutes of your time.

It might not seem like you could accomplish a lot in that short amount of time, but consider taking two minutes in the morning and two in the afternoon to genuinely ask another person how things are going.

Most of the time, we give a superficial answer to a superficial question.

“How was your weekend?”

“Fine. How about yours?”

“Fine.”

“Do anything fun?”

“Nah, just worked around the house.”

“Me too. See ya.”

That’s usually how our encounters go – just enough to acknowledge the person, ask the polite question and move on.

Ask any more, and we appear nosy or pushy. Don’t ask that second question and it looks like we don’t care or only asked to have something to say while we’re waiting for the elevator door to open or for that person to get out of the way of the coffee maker.

Truth be told, we often don’t know anything more about that person other than they work where we work.

But if we allowed ourselves to ask a genuine follow-up question, we just might find out something interesting about the people we come into contact with each and every day.

The willingness to personally connect has been waning for the past few years.

The days of dropping in to visit relatives or friends for a cup of coffee and a chat are long gone. We’re either too busy or we don’t want to barge in on people without being invited.

We text friends and family members instead of visiting or calling on the phone. The times we do talk are because we can’t text.

There’s a self-imposed barrier between us and other people, and we make little effort to break down the wall.

Whenever opportunities for conversations come our way, we deflect and run.

I often get exasperated when my phone rings or someone stops by my room to chat. Later I find they had something on their mind they wanted to talk about with another person, but I felt I had to file papers or clear off my desk instead.

So today, even though it was two hours past quitting time and I was working late to get caught up, a colleague stopped by and we chatted for about 20 minutes.

Mostly small talk, but at the end of our conversation, Rachel’s the one who said if we’d just take two minutes to talk to other people, we could perhaps make the world a better place.

She’s right.

Take the two minutes. Forget the filing. Forget catching that elevator. Spend one or two minutes talking with someone you encounter every day but never seem to have the time to stop and listen to them talk, sometimes about nothing, sometimes about what’s important.

Their body language and face will tell you if they’re willing to talk, so pay attention. Sooner or later, they’ll remember you were someone who seemed to genuinely care about what they had to say.

Be that person.

Two minutes.

That’s all it’ll take to make someone’s world a little brighter.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

 

I don’t know.

Three small yet powerful words that can answer most of life’s questions.

What are you going to do with the rest of your life?

What are your plans after high school?

When are you going to settle down and get married?

We’ve always been told “I don’t know” is not an answer. “Yes,” “No,” and “Maybe” are responses, but sitting on the fence with a perplexed look on our faces isn’t really an answer.

Perhaps we’re selling those three words short.

“I don’t know” means quite a bit. It can mean we’re not sure and we don’t want to commit.

Sure the job we have stinks, but when people ask us when we’re going to move on or find something else to do, it’s tough to say we’re stuck at a job we hate.

It’s harder to say we’re staying at a dead-end job because we have to pay the utilities and mortgage on a house we’re already regretting buying and having to put a new battery in the junker mini-van.

Walking away from overwhelming responsibilities to do something different isn’t at option at this point in our lives.

We tell ourselves we don’t know all the time. A glance in the mirror causes us to do a double take – was that really me with that huge derriere, gray hair and double chin?

What was I thinking when I put on those too-tight pants this morning? Maybe I was thinking they’d look okay with a long top but the shirt didn’t cover as much as I thought it would.

Or maybe I wasn’t thinking. Those clothes were the first things I grabbed after a tossing-and-turning night. I really didn’t know what I was putting on except I could reach them in the closet and they were clean.

Little kids respond with “I don’t know” except when asked who broke the cookie jar. On that question, they blurt out “not me” and eventually rat out their little brother or sister. But when pressed, ole “I don’t know” is the culprit.

When they’re growing up, the questions never stop – why do I have to take a bath, why do I have to eat vegetables, why do I have to go to bed?

Most of us take our time and answer the questions as best we can, but inevitably, questions come up where we have no suitable response – death, moving, a shortage of money. There’s no explanation a child can understand except I don’t know.

When the questions involve the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, we hem and haw and throw out a fairy tale we heard when we were kids. If the children don’t buy those answers, we almost belly up to the bar – I don’t know if there’s really a Santa, but if you don’t believe, you don’t get anything.

That response usually stops the questions.

“What’s your curfew?” was our question to said teen when they came rolling in an hour late.

“I don’t know,” was the answer. “Did I even have a curfew?”

Of course they had a curfew. Of course you wanted to know who they were with and where they went.

When your child asks why you have to be so strict, you can spend hours defending your reasoning.

Or you can answer fairly quickly and with frank honesty – “I don’t know.”

Parents are always supposed to know, but let’s face it, most of the time, we’re winging it, secretly praying we’re making the correct decisions and saying the right words.

But we don’t really know if what we’re doing is the best answer or the best solution.

So why not be honest.

I don’t know is a perfectly acceptable answer.

I just know it.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

The mid-term elections are over.

Most of the candidate’s yard signs are in storage, and we’re no longer getting political calls and text messages on our phones.

I’m still wondering how these political pollsters have my personal cell phone number since I’m not a volunteer nor have I ever posted my number on any political site.

My dad would have the answer:  communists.

He was convinced the communists were around every corner and the culprit behind every political fiasco.

It didn’t help that we had random air raid drills at our elementary school where we were supposed to crouch underneath our desks when the atomic bomb was dropped on us by the Russians.

Now it seems ridiculous to think that hiding underneath a school desk would shield us from radiation, but the fear of the communists was so high, we did anything to escape their evil clutches.

To add to the paranoia, there were posters all over the school walls to be on the lookout for the, yes, evil communists.

We no longer have to worry about the communists, or any other shady shenanigans, slipping by unnoticed. These days, people, robots or trolls leave comments on every online news story, blog and video.

Frankly, they’re fun reading for a variety of reasons.

First, the comments reinforce my belief that there are really stupid people out there. I used to wonder how these ignoramuses maneuvered through big words like “economy” and “deficit,” but then I realized that they weren’t reading the story.

They were simply restating the rhetoric they’d seen somewhere else, copied the words and pasted them in the comments section. That’s the reason why so many comments spout the same political garbage post after post.

Some of them reflect the writer’s intellectual level, especially their writing skills. The ability to spell and capitalize words has atrophied in direct relation to the growth of the Internet.

Not only do hot-headed posters misuse “you’re” and “your” – excuse me while I put on my Grammar Police hat, but “you’re” is an abbreviation of “you are,” such as “you are screaming in print when you type in all caps.” “Your” should be used when stating “your opinions are pointless.”

Some of the comments make good sense, especially when calling out ridiculous “breaking news stories” that are often no better than “The National Enquirer” headlines or stories out of a dime novel from the 1950s.

Witty, snarky commenters have a field day with ridiculous stories, and that’s when I applaud the freedom of the press on the Internet. These writers make me laugh out loud, especially those who have an acerbic wit and the English skills to match their right-on-target comments.

There are often intelligent and lucid points of view from both sides of the political table. Even when I don’t agree with what the writer states, if their comment makes me stop and think, that’s a great brain exercise.

This newspaper encourages and runs signed letters to the editor. I especially applaud these people because they can’t hide behind some cute or clever online persona. They allow their opinion to be printed in the newspaper with their named signed at the bottom in the town where they live for everyone to see.

I read each and every letter because they make me think and applaud the writer, even if I disagree with their position.

My dad loved reading the opinion page in the newspaper, and I know he’d love reading all the online news and political comments. He’d tell anyone who’d listen where these far-fetched beliefs come from – yes, the communists.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I texted my sister last week, asking her for her home mailing address. I wanted to send her a card, but I didn’t have my address book at the office.

She texted me back her address along with an extra comment – “Get with current technology and put my address in your phone.”

“Who deals with an address book anymore,” she said with a laugh when I called to thank her for the address.

I figured everyone had a tattered A-Z address book with the home addresses of all their friends and relatives penciled in the pages.

They don’t. At least not any more. People keep up with email or Facebook addresses because few people mail letters or cards to other people.

Perhaps keeping home addresses is out of touch with today’s way of communicating – emails, evites and texting – but there’s something special about getting a card in the mail – the U.S. mail – that’s been addressed by hand and has a hand-written note on the inside.

In a metal box in my closet are letters my father, mother and grandfather wrote to me, and those letters are priceless. They’re a tangible reminder of my loved ones’ personalities, their being that shines through the shaky and slanted penmanship on the paper.

I looked online for other obsolete items in the home. Topping the list was encyclopedias. I’ll go along with that idea, but I have fond memories of sitting down with the Childcraft “How and Why” books for hours, reading about animals, different countries and the mysteries of the ocean.

Today, I can find all that information in seconds on Google, but I’m glad I have memories of getting the actual book off the shelf, year after year, and reading the books together with my younger siblings.

Phones have long been on the extinct list, and I wouldn’t trade my cell phone for all the wall or rotary phones in the world.

But there were long hours of sitting with a pink Princess rotary phone in my lap, wrapping the cord around my wrist and fingers, while talking to my high school best friend Trudi about who was the cutest Beatle – John or Paul.

Much has been written about the uselessness of a paper map, and I’m the first one to let an electronic voice in my car tell me exactly where to turn, where the traffic jams are and when it’s time to slow down because there’s a radar gun ahead.

But I’m glad my dad taught me how to follow a route on a paper map and that our sons know how to read a map as well. Those of us who know how to fold up a paper map get extra bragging rights.

The article also noted that photo albums are obsolete now that we have digital displays that flash images like a miniature television screen.

On this entry, I’ll disagree.

I love looking through old photo albums, especially with the older members of my family. Those black-and-white photos with the black triangular paste-in corners open up the memory floodgates.

Their rich stories about the old days connect me to the past much more than walking past a flashing digital display on a bookshelf. I now find myself flipping through photo albums with my grandchildren, passing the tradition on to another generation.

I wouldn’t trade my much-erased and dog-eared address book, oversized photo albums or the faded family pictures on the wall for all the high-tech, speedy electronics in the world.

So pass me that princess rotary phone because I still remember my best friend’s phone number.

Trudi, we still need to talk about George and Ringo.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.