Month: August 2013

Paying It Forward

I own a rather large and diverse collection of DVD’s that have been inspirational to me over the years. One of those happens to be a movie entitled “Pay It Forward”, which stars Kevin Spacey (as Eugene) and a young Haley Joel Osment (as Trevor). The movie’s concept is simple. Trevor is given a class assignment by his social studies teacher, Eugene, to come up with a plan to change the world through direct action. On his way home from school one day, Trevor befriends a homeless man named Jerry, who is played by Jim Caviezel. Through that interaction, Trevor manifests the idea to “pay it forward” by doing a good deed for three people, who in turn must do good deeds for three other people, thus creating a charitable pyramid scheme. The rest of the movie revolves around Trevor’s execution of this plan and the interconnectivity to how it all eventually comes together. Quite frankly, our world desperately needs something like Trevor’s plan to be implemented immediately.

Anger and self-centeredness appears to be on the rise everywhere in our world these days. There is major unrest in Egypt and many unnecessary deaths occurring there. It seems as if people are “going postal” daily and murdering too many innocent lives. And even on a smaller level, I observe many people these days focusing solely on their own needs, wants, and desires, and caring less about the rest of the state of the world. It’s sad and unfortunate that this is happening but it doesn’t have to be. Each of us have the power to turn it around and bring more light and love on this planet by doing our own actions of “paying it forward”.

There are so many opportunities for doing this and yet too many of us rarely make a single attempt to move in this direction. Instead, people appear to be doing the exact opposite like throwing trash out car windows or leaving it behind for someone else to take care of in public places. There’s those who are constantly cutting others off or not let others in on roads that they’re driving in. Some aren’t doing an action as simple as holding a door open for someone following right behind themselves. Others watch as people are short on change or a few dollars to make a purchase in front of them when they have the amount in their own pocket to contribute. All of this is just plain selfishness and self-centeredness. We let our brains tell us we don’t have the time, money, or energy to help out or we allow our constant state of stress and anger to leave us in the state of mind to not giving a crap about anyone else.

Ironically, all of this can be turned around in a millisecond by doing a few random acts of kindness every single day. They don’t have to be as pronounced as Trevor did in Pay It Forward either. It can be as simple as cleaning up that trash left behind by someone else. This is one of the things I try to do quite often, such as in a public bathroom, when I see paper towels strewn across the floor, I take the time to clean the mess up. People notice these types of actions and it affects their own hearts, minds, and souls where it often inspires them to doing the exact same thing.

Try doing anything that is a random act of kindness. Buy a person’s coffee in front or behind you in a line that you are waiting in, even if you only have a small amount of money on you. Place that loose change or even a dollar or two in that homeless person’s cup regardless of what you think about them. Allow a person in a store to go ahead of you in a line even when you’re brain tells you that your in a rush. Take the time to ask someone crying near you, even if you don’t know them, if they need any help or even better, a hug. What this world truly needs is for all of us to begin paying it forward by doing things like this. Every kind act that any of us ever do is always being noticed regardless if we are seeing it or not. I believe God constantly keeps a watchful eye out for things things like this and puts things along our path all the time that could use our charity.

I encourage any of you reading this to take a moment, breathe, and try to do one random act of kindness today that can begin your own path of paying it forward. Trevor believed and committed deeply in his soul to his quest in doing so, and you can to. Begin to do your own version of paying it forward and not only will you feel better, but the world will move one step closer to being a more loving and peaceful place to exist in.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Be Still

Have you ever been in a position where you didn’t know what action to take for something you were facing? Or have you ever encountered a dilemma where there were multiple paths you could go down but didn’t know which of them to follow? Sometimes, the best decision in those situations is to take an action that many overlook as even an action at all and that’s to be still.

Being still requires patience and that’s a trait too many of us seem to lack. It’s one I’ve been trying to learn a lot more about over the past few years. But enduring the high pain levels I’ve been going through daily for several years now has often led my brain to taking headstrong actions. And unfortunately, for each of those ego-based actions I took, there were re-actions that brought on a new level of stress. So deciding to take some medication to numb the pain usually sent me down the path that caused even more pain to occur and prevented the source of it from ever healing. There were times too that those headstrong actions led me to trying new healing modalities that did nothing for me but detour me for months and months and drained me financially. Thankfully, those experiences led me to the place where I found the action of being still to be a much better one to follow. It’s one where I wait patiently now for clear direction to come from my spirit and from God.

Recently, my sister’s family went through one of these experiences where they didn’t remain still and wait patiently for things to happen as they were meant to. Her husband had gotten a new job out of state that was going to require their family to move again. There were several more months left in the school year for their sons and their first reaction was to remain where they were until the end of the school year, sell their house, and then move. But certain conditions came up that brought about some fears within them. This led to actions that were swiftly taken to move them out of state before either the school year ended and before their house had sold. For the next four months that followed, their family lived in quite a bit of chaos and ironically, when all the dust had settled, their original house had sold just after their kids school year would have ended. The point here is that if they had just been still and waited patiently as they originally had intended, there’s a good chance their stress levels would have been drastically less during that period of time.

The example with my sister’s family is one I often reflect on when I think about trying to do something abruptly to curb my level of pain these days. And truthfully, the last thing I want to do is complicate my healing process anymore than it’s already been over the past few years. Too often in my life I’ve jumped head first into doing things without being still and suffered the consequences in doing so. So being still has become a much healthier action for me to take. It’s one where I simply just wait patiently for the answers to come. And even when they do, I still continue to be still until my spirit says the time is right to take any actions that came from those answers. Don’t get me wrong, being still is extremely challenging, especially for someone like me who is a go-getter and a Type A personality. But I am finding my life isn’t filled with an abundance of poor decisions anymore that did nothing but lead me down many dead-end paths.

So the next time you are facing your own dilemma and don’t know what to do…you might want to take a moment, breathe, and realize that being still really is one of the actions you could take to deal with this situation. Instead of making an irrational decision from your ego that could do nothing but bring you regret, try this path of patience and I’m sure you may find yourself experiencing a lot less stress.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

The Cheesecake Factory And Its Long Wait Times To Be Seated

Restaurant openings are not normally an exciting thing I look forward to, especially not for a chained establishment I’ve already been dining at since the 1990’s. But a few days ago, I did exactly that when I went with my partner to the first Cheesecake Factory to come to Michigan, which had just opened its doors only two days earlier. Located at the Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi, MI, which is just outside Detroit, the opening marked the 164th addition for the restaurant chain. And if there is one thing you can expect to happen at any Cheesecake Factory, especially for one that just opened its doors with no others locations around it for several hundred miles, it’s that you are going to be waiting a long time to be seated.

Waiting for extended times at various restaurants is something quite familiar to me as I have dined out quite a bit throughout my life. But the longest I can honestly say I’ve ever had to wait to be seated at any restaurant is actually at the Cheesecake Factory. That’s only because the visit I had a few days ago to the one that just opened outside Detroit wasn’t the first opening I had ever been to for the chain. When I had lived in the Washington D.C. area, I had gone to one of their original openings back when there were only a handful of them in the country and that was at the one being opened in Bethesda, Maryland. I can still remember that night I went there and waited for over 3 hours and 30 minutes simply because the hype had been so great surrounding the restaurant. On many other occasions of dining there in the years that followed, my wait times were still between two and three hours.

I’m not sure if it’s the 200 plus menu item choices, or the 38 types of cheesecake, or the incredibly large portions that convince so many people to wait for as long as they do like I always have at the Cheesecake Factory. But either way, I learned very early on with this chain that the worst time to go is definitely in its first few weeks of opening, especially in an area where there has never been one. And the only reason why I went to another grand opening again was purely for the fact that my partner and I had a gift certificate to use and that it’s his favorite restaurant chain.

While it’s a no brainer to me now that one can expect long waiting times to be seated when a big named restaurant first opens its doors, that didn’t seem to be the same feeling shared with many others I observed in the Novi restaurant the other day. It appeared that quite a number of people came with too high of expectations. Many were grumpy and complaining on how long they had to wait or how the wait times kept changing. My partner and I arrived directly between the lunch and dinner hours and were told it was going to be 70 minutes before we would get seated. Given my previous experiences with the Cheesecake Factory, I knew it was going to be a lot longer than that. So instead of staying in the throngs of people crammed together near the front desk, I took a stroll into the mall. When I returned, there were even more people jammed together so I chose to wait outside instead. I found a nice spot by myself and enjoyed the cool air on a very beautiful summer day. By the time we had gotten seated, it had taken just about two hours of time and I was pleasantly surprised as I thought it was going to be even longer than that. Even better, I was calm and stress free. My partner on the other hand was extremely tense and quite upset about the whole process, had visited the front desk several times, and had commented on how he felt many others had gotten seated ahead of us that shouldn’t have been. What’s interesting is that I saw a mirror with him reflecting back on myself to how I once was. It’s how I was at that Bethesda opening when I waited for those three and a half hours and it’s how I acted for many years after that, at many other restaurants, where I had also endured any long waiting times to be seated.

Thankfully, after we were seated, my partner quickly got over his frustrations and we had a very enjoyable meal. During it, we spoke to many of the waitresses that passed by who told us that quite a few people were extremely irritated and grumpy over the length of time it took them to get seated. Some had even waited up to five hours of time and weren’t very miserable about it. I was grateful I wasn’t one of them as not once had I felt stressed about the wait time. Is that due to the fact that I had been down that road so many times before? Or is it because I had compassion for a place that was just trying to get its new bearings in order? Or could it have been that all those prayers to God to gain greater patience have paid off? I’m not sure which of them is the truest answer, but regardless, I’m just grateful I remained calm and had an enjoyable experience from the time we arrived till the time we left several hours later.

Whether you find yourself waiting a long time at a restaurant to be seated like I did the other day, or are in a long line for a ride at an amusement park, or are at some store waiting to purchase something, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and realize it’s a choice you’re making to continue doing so. Ask God to give you patience if you decide to remain there, especially for those moments when it appears that others are getting ahead of you or that it’s taking way too long. You might find in doing so that your wait time flies by much quicker than if you decided to complain your whole way through it instead.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson