One Nice Thing

Photo: Petr Kratchovil

My friend David specializes in writing books about social innovation. He's working on a new book now but, previously, he published How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, which features profiles of some ordinary people who have done extraordinary things, mostly through tenacity and sheer force of will. (Nelson Mandela called it "Wonderfully hopeful and enlightening ..." And I like David so much that I'm not even jealous! [okay...I admit it...I'm a little jealous... but just a little.])Before that, he wrote a book on the Grameen Bank, The Price of a Dream ... nearly 10 years before the bank and it's founder, Prof. Muhammad Yunas, were awarded a Nobel Prize for the work they do.

I've been thinking about David and his books ... and about my friend, Gordan, a Fulbright Fellow who left his comfortable life as a college professor to work with refugees in the Sudan ... and about my friend Ghia, who helped build a school for girls in Afghanistan . . . and about my friend Lisa, who quit her job and left New York City, in part so that she could devote more time to the hospital she is helping to build in Africa . . and about my friend and sister-in-law, Fifi who quit her job at a popular womens' magazine and went to India to shoot a documentary about children being sold into sexual slavery... and, in fact, about all my friends and extended family do to make the world a little better.

They all are top of mind right now as I work my way through the last few pages of The New York Time's Bestseller, Three Cups of Tea, with its detailed account of Greg Mortenson's work building non-secular schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The book is compelling and beautifully crafted, so I highly recommend it. But . . . as I near the end, wherein the devastating consequences of carpet bombing an area with B-52s are revealed in stark human terms . . . something very like despair wells up in me. There is so much need. So much poverty. So much pain. So much anguish and terror and cruelty. I know I'm not the only one who feels small and helpless in its shadow.

It's human to feel overwhelmed, I think. And the antidote to that feeling is simple. Prayer, obviously, to reinforce your own connection to the Divine. But also, in the words of Debbie Tenzer, "Do One Nice Thing." My father used to love to remind me, "From tiny acorns mighty oak trees grow." I've got a pocket full of acorns. How about you?