Blog Posting, March 29, 2009
Random thoughts and observations
About six weeks ago, I was walking on 10ths Street and Ave A in the East village, New York City. We were heading for an early Saturday morning haircut, figuring we’d start the day early and miss the crowds. We never walk in that neighborhood at that time of day, usually our jaunts there are late afternoon or early evening, in tune with sort of hip New York. I saw a most disturbing sight, it’s been going around in my head for weeks and I am finally putting it out for all of you.
There are some really old parishes, churches and synagogues in downtown New York, the earliest dating from the early sixteenth century, including the earliest Jewish cemetery with grave dating from 1600’s on. It’s a small hidden treasure just off St James Street in Chinatown. It’s the first Jewish Burial ground in the new world and has many graves of young men who fought in the Revolutionary. More on this next time.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/331565719/
But I digress, we made the turn on east 10th street and there was a line of over a hundred people, waiting for the soup kitchen to open. It was freezing and the line embodied every ethnicity, age group, and the entire rainbow of New York. Homeless, elderly, fathers with children, mothers with children, children with elderly parents, black, brown, white Asian, and every other color of the rainbow, young punk musicians, elderly men and women, people in wheelchairs and people in Addidas. I guess that I am very naïve or very insulated, I was feeling bad for the hard working people who lost good jobs in the finance industry as I know many of them personally.
Well my attitude changed completely that morning, I am the luckiest person in the world. I have a roof over my head, food to eat, health care insurance the capacity to work and make a living. We are responsible for other people, we who have all the gifts must see and touch how other people live, both around the world and in our small town that we call New York City. I have no idea how to do this, my thoughts always go toward random acts of kindness, accepting that when someone asks you for something and you can give it, give it.
How does this couple with my stated discussion on how to grow a business in a recession? I think that it does, I think that we need to remember that we are not the only people in the world, we need to look and see things that are happening around us and understand that that the things that we do ultimately effect the entire world.
