The Butterfly Project© 2009
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved.
By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we
relieve ourselves also. –Thomas Browne
A word to the wise: watch out for the nobodies.
You know the ones – people who seem to blend into the crowd; the faceless, nameless souls you pass by everyday and almost never notice. The “Plain Jane's” and the “John Does” who somehow turn being invisible into an art form. For every person who draws attention to themselves, either intentionally or unintentionally, there are hundreds who go by undetected, yet they are the ones who hold far greater power and influence than any public figure whose every move is made known.
Getting too deep for you? Consider this:
For every act of terrorism, it's not the leader of the terrorist group who carries out their evil plans, but the silent followers. The nobodies who slip by unnoticed and set off bombs or fly planes into buildings, leaving mass destruction in their wake.
For every campus massacre there was a nobody or a group of nobodies whose hatred and anger grew silently to deadly proportions while even those closest to them were tragically unaware.
The most newsworthy and sensational of all human tragedies and triumphs comes not from the “somebody’s,” but the nobodies who made everybody sit up and take notice. “He seemed such a nice quiet man...a good neighbor. I had no idea.” “She came from nothing and built an empire....” You know the story. We all do.
Then there's the other kind of nobodies - the nobodies who are actually the somebody’s who deserve our attention, not the other way around. Those are the ones to watch out for.
In the late 1980s when I lived in New York City, one winter night, when the temperature was bitterly cold, as only Easterners know it can get, I was on my way to the train when I passed a woman in the tunnel who was lying between two pieces of cardboard. She was crying softly and wore only a thin t-shirt and tattered pair of jeans. I wore a coat and two sweaters and was still chilled to the bone. She was begging passers by to help her because someone had stolen her shoes. As I approached her I was struck to my very core by the desperation and raw need emanating from her eyes. She was begging for someone to listen to her. No one even looked in her direction.
No one.
The closer I got, the more horrified I became. She was frost bitten all over and her feet were a mangled, inhuman color. She was so cold her shivers had become convulsions and you could see she was broken beyond human endurance. For a brief few seconds I had one of those moments when you think “This is a dream. It can't be real.” But she was real and she was pleading with me to just look her way. She cried to me in a voice filled with a pitiful sorrow “They took my shoes, my shoes! God, help me find my shoes.”
I stopped in front of her and numbly handed her my work bag and emptied my pockets into her shaking hands. I never spoke a word. I had no words. The look in her eyes was more than grateful, it was something sacred, and one I cannot forget. I went on to my train in a state of shock and an unexplainable fear over what I had just seen.
There are some things that you see that are indelibly etched in your mind. Things that you wish you had never seen. That moment was one of those times. Over the years I have thought many times of that woman.
Each time, one question always bothers me more than the others. “How?” Not how did she get to that place. Not how did someone steal her shoes –but, how were so many people able to walk right by and not even look at her?
“When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if
their reason has left them.” (Willa Cather)
It happens every day. People in desperate need are ignored as we walk on by, too focused on our destination to be bothered to look their way. The cries of desperation and need have become so commonplace that we have learned to tune them out, lest we become obligated to help.
To the listening ear, the sound is deafening.
In your little corner of the world there are nobodies crying out to be heard and people who need you to see them. You walk by them everyday. In the store, on the street, in your neighborhood, in your home. People who need someone to notice them and have the courage to care. It may be as simple as a smile, or it may be an act of forgiveness to someone who doesn't deserve it. It may be a word of encouragement to someone who is tired and lonely or sharing your dinner with a friend. It may be listening to someone having a tough time or being kind to someone who is not kind to you. It is putting aside your own agenda for a just a moment and making the needs of another human being more
important than your own.
The smallest deeds of kindness can have a massive impact on a person's life.
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to receive a
great deal, you first have to give a great deal. If each individual will give of himself to
whomever he can, wherever he can, in any way that he can, in the long run he will be
compensated in the exact proportion that he gives.” –R.A. Hayward
Did you know:
When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize, she was asked, “What can we do to promote world peace?” She answered, “Go home and love your family.” Building on this theme in her Nobel lecture, she said: “Around the world, not only in the poor countries, but I found the poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove. When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society – that poverty is so hurtable [sic] and so much, and I find that very difficult.”
You don't have to be Mother Teresa to be a saint. In fact, the most beloved saints were actually – nobodies, just like you and me. Everyday people who stepped out of their comfort zone and saw that nobody was more important than anyone else and everybody deserved to be loved.
relieve ourselves also. –Thomas Browne
A word to the wise: watch out for the nobodies.
You know the ones – people who seem to blend into the crowd; the faceless, nameless souls you pass by everyday and almost never notice. The “Plain Jane's” and the “John Does” who somehow turn being invisible into an art form. For every person who draws attention to themselves, either intentionally or unintentionally, there are hundreds who go by undetected, yet they are the ones who hold far greater power and influence than any public figure whose every move is made known.
Getting too deep for you? Consider this:
For every act of terrorism, it's not the leader of the terrorist group who carries out their evil plans, but the silent followers. The nobodies who slip by unnoticed and set off bombs or fly planes into buildings, leaving mass destruction in their wake.
For every campus massacre there was a nobody or a group of nobodies whose hatred and anger grew silently to deadly proportions while even those closest to them were tragically unaware.
The most newsworthy and sensational of all human tragedies and triumphs comes not from the “somebody’s,” but the nobodies who made everybody sit up and take notice. “He seemed such a nice quiet man...a good neighbor. I had no idea.” “She came from nothing and built an empire....” You know the story. We all do.
Then there's the other kind of nobodies - the nobodies who are actually the somebody’s who deserve our attention, not the other way around. Those are the ones to watch out for.
In the late 1980s when I lived in New York City, one winter night, when the temperature was bitterly cold, as only Easterners know it can get, I was on my way to the train when I passed a woman in the tunnel who was lying between two pieces of cardboard. She was crying softly and wore only a thin t-shirt and tattered pair of jeans. I wore a coat and two sweaters and was still chilled to the bone. She was begging passers by to help her because someone had stolen her shoes. As I approached her I was struck to my very core by the desperation and raw need emanating from her eyes. She was begging for someone to listen to her. No one even looked in her direction.
No one.
The closer I got, the more horrified I became. She was frost bitten all over and her feet were a mangled, inhuman color. She was so cold her shivers had become convulsions and you could see she was broken beyond human endurance. For a brief few seconds I had one of those moments when you think “This is a dream. It can't be real.” But she was real and she was pleading with me to just look her way. She cried to me in a voice filled with a pitiful sorrow “They took my shoes, my shoes! God, help me find my shoes.”
I stopped in front of her and numbly handed her my work bag and emptied my pockets into her shaking hands. I never spoke a word. I had no words. The look in her eyes was more than grateful, it was something sacred, and one I cannot forget. I went on to my train in a state of shock and an unexplainable fear over what I had just seen.
There are some things that you see that are indelibly etched in your mind. Things that you wish you had never seen. That moment was one of those times. Over the years I have thought many times of that woman.
Each time, one question always bothers me more than the others. “How?” Not how did she get to that place. Not how did someone steal her shoes –but, how were so many people able to walk right by and not even look at her?
“When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if
their reason has left them.” (Willa Cather)
It happens every day. People in desperate need are ignored as we walk on by, too focused on our destination to be bothered to look their way. The cries of desperation and need have become so commonplace that we have learned to tune them out, lest we become obligated to help.
To the listening ear, the sound is deafening.
In your little corner of the world there are nobodies crying out to be heard and people who need you to see them. You walk by them everyday. In the store, on the street, in your neighborhood, in your home. People who need someone to notice them and have the courage to care. It may be as simple as a smile, or it may be an act of forgiveness to someone who doesn't deserve it. It may be a word of encouragement to someone who is tired and lonely or sharing your dinner with a friend. It may be listening to someone having a tough time or being kind to someone who is not kind to you. It is putting aside your own agenda for a just a moment and making the needs of another human being more
important than your own.
The smallest deeds of kindness can have a massive impact on a person's life.
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to receive a
great deal, you first have to give a great deal. If each individual will give of himself to
whomever he can, wherever he can, in any way that he can, in the long run he will be
compensated in the exact proportion that he gives.” –R.A. Hayward
Did you know:
When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize, she was asked, “What can we do to promote world peace?” She answered, “Go home and love your family.” Building on this theme in her Nobel lecture, she said: “Around the world, not only in the poor countries, but I found the poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove. When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society – that poverty is so hurtable [sic] and so much, and I find that very difficult.”
You don't have to be Mother Teresa to be a saint. In fact, the most beloved saints were actually – nobodies, just like you and me. Everyday people who stepped out of their comfort zone and saw that nobody was more important than anyone else and everybody deserved to be loved.
