From the perspective of a single human being, it is often asked How can one person change the world?

I think at the core of this question are two simple answers: A human can change the World by one act of kindness at a time or, conversely, by one act of evil at a time.

I choose kindness!

In December of 2009 I read about Kiva (www.Kiva.org). Kiva is a microfinance facilitator that works with microfinance organizations around the world to connect lenders to poor borrowers and the borrowers get the loans with no finance charges. I decided that I could start with fifty dollars and help people borrow money so they could make a better life for themselves and their families!

Since December of 2009, by adding $ 25.00 dollars at a time I now have a bankroll of $ 1000.00 dollars in my Kiva account. As borrowers pay back their loans, I re-loan the money back out.  The $ 1000.00 dollars has actually been lent out for a total of $ 3,275.00 dollars to 104 borrowers.

When I first started with Kiva I had no goal. I just thought the idea of helping people help themselves was a good start. Now, as I think and write about my experience, I think my goal is to keep loaning $ 25.00 at a time, one act of kindness at a time.

The lyrics for Scattered Road (click the link to listen to the song) were written by both of us in a day. I was listening to Garth Brook’s song What She’s Doing Now and my thoughts turned to old flame from many years back. I sat down and wrote the first verse and half of the chorus in about 15 minutes. I sent them to Wayne and that night he finished the Chorus and second verse in about an hour. Collaborating like that was crazy cool!

Realman (click the link to listen to the song) is a song idea I had after listening to one of Wayne’s one minute music treatments. We were sitting around one day just thinking about what a Realman is and out came this song.

Songwriting with a friend is really fun – when you collaborate it seems like the song isn’t yours or isn’t your collaborators. The song seems to have its own voice!

If you know someone in the music business ask them to get these to some famous artist to record. I’d love to hear a star sing either of these two on the radio.

Sitting at church listening to Dr. Cooper talk about faith the other day, the question came to my mind and an answer came to me from the perspective of Jesus Christ. What was his message? What is his message? Sitting in that pew He answered “John 3:16 – For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

All the great artist throughout time have struggled with this question. Socrates’ message may be one of his famous quotes “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.” In our lifetime John Lennon’s message may have been from his hit song Imagine where he said “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people sharing the world.” And then Thomas Jefferson’s message comes to life as the Declaration of Independence where he writes “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

Answering one of life’s, or as I think it may be one of God’s larger questions can be tough. Being a Christian I know that I walk daily with my savior. We have these conversations and he challenges me – to grow, to learn, to ponder, to question what life is about.

My mother sent me a newspaper article from the Dallas Morning News titled Life’s Larger Questions where author William McKenzie talks about life’s larger questions. Mom wanted me to read it and then comment on it through my blog. I found the timing of her request inspirational as I feel that God asked me the original question a couple of weeks ago and through my mom is asking again.

As I ponder the question What is your message? my best answer right now, at this time in my life is that life is precious and rare and unique. We all have been endowed with an unique spirit and unique gifts to add to the chorus of life, to change the world, to make the world a better place That we have been given everlasting life through the Grace of Jesus Christ and that when life here on Earth is complete, we shall be with each other to live in the glorious presence of the Father.

What is your message? Do you have one?

And then HE found it for me.

A friend who is now in the presence of The Father wrote this a while back… thanks Zac, your words still rock!

When You Get It, You Get It

 by Zac

 

The Subaru car company had a slogan for a while back in 2002. The slogan was, “When you get it, you get it.” The slogan had a sort of I-know-something-that-you-don’t-know attitude. But, since it was an advertising slogan, it was hardly arrogant. After all, Subaru was telling me the good news. They knew something that I did not know; they were sharing that something with me; it was up to me to decide what to do with that information. This relates well to the concept of blindness being converted into sight.

You see, if this LENR machine is verified, the age of cheap energy will come to the age of man.

I don’t know, maybe Rossi is another in the long line of fraudsters. But, maybe, just maybe, this Italian might just be for real and bring about a revolution to humanity. I hope instead of a fraud, the news tonight will be of a new era unleashed.

As I sit here this morning finishing one thought another comes to me. Everyday, all around us, change is always coming…

The background story goes that Steve Jobs, an adopted baby, had searched for his biological parents during the 80′s. He found his biological mother and through that relationship found out about his biological father. He didn’t like what he learned about his father, so he never sought out to meet or develop a relationship with his biological father.

His biological sister had told a story to Steve that his biological father related to her of the story of him managing a restaurant in Silicon Valley, where Steve’s offices were near, and meeting Steve Jobs when he came into the restaurant. Neither Steve or his biological father knew at that time of their relationship.

When I read this, an epiphany feeling came over me. You see, for a couple of years now I have been thinking about the relationship of God and man and how he might “talk” to us (The Burning Bush, Are You Listening). What if God was strolling the Earth one sunny day and you happen to come across him and shook his hand? Or you talked to him, but he never told you of his true identity?

Some years later you find yourself in Heaven and you come before God and realize that you had met and Shook Your Fathers Hand…

I don’t know if God walks this Earth incognito, but I think it is interesting to think of the repercussions - how do you treat strangers? I think we should treat each other, strange or well known, the same as you never know whose hand you are shaking.

Now when Mr. Newton suggested these ideas that would over time become scientific laws, I’m not sure he was thinking of Humans as the objects. But as I have observed over the years I find this law applies equally to us mere mortal humans.

How many times have you heard of someone retiring and shortly thereafter they become sick and die! You see, their mind and body stopped their motion and simply went to a resting state.

The “resting” of one’s mind is a common problem that many suffer from. I think our society is configured wrong when it comes to continuing education. Most of us in the US get a decent education for twelve years and then some continue to get four more years at a college or university. Very few continue after starting their career to get an advance degree or through self-exploration to continue their quest for knowledge.

But most disturbing is that so many people simply stop learning. It seems that people get into a routine of life and expect that what they’ve learned as a young person will take them to retirement.

Remember that Minds at Rest tend to say rested, minds in motion tend to stay in motion!

It seems over the past year my mind has going through a mid-life pause and reflection. What have I done? Where am I going? Who am I? Who do I want to be? Who do I want to be remembered as? I wrote a blog rambling the other day where I looked up the fact there are around 6.9 billion people on Earth RIGHT NOW! Sometime next year there will be seven billion people rambling around this little blue marble we call home! Seven billion minds at work!

Like you, of those seven billion people I probably know at deep level maybe ten to twenty people. Isn’t that crazy that I can only call a handful out of seven billion people my really good friends. I think when I die maybe a few hundred people will have ever really known me and who/what I was all about.

As I reflect about my life I realize that I have not done all that I thought I would do. I have less than half the time left on this Earth than when I first started some forty four years ago.

Do we ever feel as if we have accomplished all that we could accomplish or is our time here just a journey of what we actually do and that it is good enough to just LIVE!

I fear that for the vast majority of the seven billion people on Earth Mediocrity Fits Well for them. They become comfortable, they accept what life is, accepts what life gives them.

I hope that the time I have left on this Earth will be used for great purposes. I hope that all the souls I know and will ever know will always strive for a great journey of life!

I’m sure you thought of many commonalities during the pause I hope you took to think about an answer!

Well, first of all each takes Intelligence to find and use! With more than 6.9 billion human beings in existence at this very moment in time, The Truth can be difficult to find. The facts of any one event in time can become easily manipulated and distorted.

With the adoption of the Internet across the planet, people, by their very nature of telling a story slowly change the facts, either by ignorance or on purpose for the purpose of deception.

So, it takes Common Sense to read an email that touts fact and determine if it deceptive or factual.

I find many emails arrive in my Inbox that are partially true and have been cleverly changed to support some persons vision of The Truth. I find that so many people live in “their reality” and they are daily trying to fit the facts and actions of their fellow human beings into “their reality”.

In today’s world, we must use Common Sense and Intelligence to take all the information from The Internet we receive and figure out The “Real” Truth.

There’s this fellow on the radio whose favorite saying is “don’t believe a word I say until you can independently confirm ‘my’ facts!” I say that is a good course of action with all data and information, especially if you get it from the Internet. There are so many ways to cross check information on the Internet. Don’t be lazy!

The Truth is out there!

Anyway, there were three young guys taking a break. Being the out-going, nosy person I am I asked if they were having fun to which they said “that’s all we do this for.”

I asked if they went to school and they said yap, we’re all on the rodeo team. I asked do you guys do the barrel racing or some such to which they chuckled and said “girls barrel ride, we are bull riders.” Now mind you one of these fellas is missing a hand so I just had to ask “Did you loose your hand to the bull.” He said na, a big fire-cracker got that. Silently my mind said “I’d like to hear that story one day.”

Being a city dude I had to ask more. So I said “so tell my guys, how do you exactly practice bull riding?” With the seriousness of a saint one of them said “We ride bulls.” I could imagine inside their minds “Is he kidding or is he just a plain stupid city slicker.”

Having a football background I know that teams practice with second stringers and aren’t always practicing at full speed. You know what I mean here. You tell the guy across the line “Hey, make me look good, don’t hit me so hard, let’s get through the practice without killing each other.” You see, you’re practicing against a human being.

But these bull riders, they ain’t practicing against no bull that they can talk to and reason with. Although I can imagine that plenty of times if you look real close, right before they pull the gate open, you can see the bull rider leaning into the bull and whispering “come on mr. bully, take it easy on me tonight.”

But anyway, back to the story.

So right at the moment I thought of “how do you exactly practice bull riding” I blurted out “So, do you guys have like a wimpy bull that isn’t quite good enough for the big arena to practice with.” With a little disgust in their eyes one replied “look, bulls ain’t like no damn horse, they never get use to someone on their back and they want to hurt you for get’in on there.”

So I guess it holds true, as with bull riding, to get good at anything it’s a matter of constant practice, even if the damn bull doesn’t like it!!!

Here he discusses how to live before you die… How to find passion for your daily life!

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Postscript:
Steve Jobs died last week on the 5th of October. There’s been a lot written about this guy who changed the technology industry. It will be interesting to read the forthcoming authorized biography.

For after all, we are “just” humans. We can’t be expected to always have an uplifted spirit.

So, in times of your dispar, when you are down and out and feeling like life has forsaken you, what do you do?

Me, I find places in my mind that bring me back from the depths of dispar. Like an image of my little girl helping me build a snow worm or a song about the resurrection and redemption that lays ahead for me:  Lazarus, by Carmen (Video)

I tell you today, have in your arsenal a place in your mind that you can go to for strength when it is needed.

I remember we use to wonder when she would sleep throughout the entire night, when would she walk, when would she would talk… So many milestones that we would see her go through!

Looking back at the four years with her seems like a blur. There are so many precious memories that will only come once for us with her.

But each day I’m with her I find something new to marvel at. She’s always on the go, always doing something, saying something, learning something, becoming something more today than she was yesterday! I think that as a parent if I give her the suroundings, encouragement, spiritual and physical nurishment, there is nothing she can’t achieve or become.

As adults we yearn for the days when our bodies weren’t so old, when our minds were fresh with excitement of a new day. Working for a living seems to put us into the rut of life where we never change our path, where we settle into the routine of life.

Sometimes when I look at my little girl I lament that she’s always changing, never “staying” with me in the rut and routine of the life that I live in. Sometimes I wish she would be that three year old forever.

But then I realize that she is my fountain of youth!

She shows me that everyday is a new day! A day filled with adventure, filled with new experiences, filled with new opportunities if I only CHOOSE to see them and to do something with them!

Hopefully, I think to myself, I can say around this world for another fifty or sixty years. The eighteen or so years that she is with me and my lovely wife is such a short time. But I will hold on to each moment, each day and each year! I will look forward to the changes of life that she will go through.

You see, as humans we have this great ability to adapt to our surroundings, to make the best of a bad situation, to withstand horrid environmental conditions, to put up with an ever-increasing pile of bat guano.

The conversation with these co-workers reminded me of my first visit to the Philippines. In the big city of Manila there’s a river “slum” where people live over the top of what can only be describes as a floating pile of Shit and Trash – literally. The stench from this is almost unbearable. But somehow, people live there in shotty homes built of thin wood and sticks.

You see, these people have allowed themselves to Get Use to the Stench!

There is no circumstance that you should ever accept that makes you become numb or accustom to the stench of life!

We all have things in our lives that are painful to deal with… Somehow we numb our noises to the stench these things create.

I say today to resist! Don’t Get Use To The Stench! EVER!

For me it gives me a place to leave a piece of myself behind. I don’t expect that when I post these random thoughts that thousands of people will read and understand them.

I guess that as I go through my mid-life reconciliation I find that very few humans have the privilege to make a impact on millions of people’s lives. People like George Washington, good old Abe Lincoln and Mother Teresa and thousands of great people throughout history who have made humanity what it is today.

For me, I’ve reconciled that if I exist in this time and can be a great father, husband, son, brother and friend to the people I love and for the strangers that I have yet to meet that I’ve done a hell of a lot for humanity.

So, today I say, “Yep, I’m Still Here” – I’m still here working at being a better father, husband, son, brother and friend…

Even today, the words of this song echo louder that We are indeed the world… that on  some great scale six billion people live together on a world that is in a solar system that is racing fast through the Universe.

That We Are The World full of humans who for all we know are alone in the physical Universe. Yes, we have God with us. But we only have each other in this dark, cold Universe that is full of things unknown.

We, the people of the world have so much to do as a peoples and as individuals. I look forward to the day when the world looks past the bondage of yesterday and toward the freedoms of tomorrow and the life of today!

Here are the words from the song of yesterday that still rings true today!

We Are The World
by: Michael Jackson

There comes a time
When we head a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
And it’s time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all

We can’t go on
Pretneding day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change
We are all a part of
God’s great big family
And the truth, you know love is all we need

[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me

Send them your heart
So they’ll know that someone cares
And their lives will be stronger and free
As God has shown us by turning stone to bread
So we all must lend a helping hand

[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me

When you’re down and out
There seems no hope at all
But if you just believe
There’s no way we can fall
Well, well, well, well, let us realize
That a change will only come
When we stand together as one

[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me

It’s an interesting letter that I reproduce here to serve as an excellent example on how, as a group, a business must see the need to change and to keep moving forward and not rest on past success.

I also liked the letter because it demonstrates that a true leader is not afraid to speak honestly and in terms everyone understands.

Hello there,
There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times – his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.
We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.

Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally – taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.
And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody’s took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.
Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

YES, you can make significant changes in the things you don’t like about yourself…

Here’s Dr. David Cooper teaching on the subject. I really like the second sermon on change!

Sermon 1: http://vidego.streamingfaith.com/player.php?p=i4fl910j

Sermon 2: http://vidego.streamingfaith.com/player.php?p=mp0oy39t

Trust me, you’ll be glad you spent the time watching these…

You know, when the rigors of life get you down, you need quick thought that re-sets your frame of mind so you get back on track and keep moving forward.

I’m not sure what my motto would be, but I like “Roll With The Changes”

Way back REO Speedwagon wrote this song (see it here on YouTube).

As soon as you are able
Woman, I am willin’
To make the break that we
Are on the brink of

My cup is on the table
Our love is spillin’
Waitin’ here for you to
Take and drink of

So if you’re tired of the
Same old story
Oh, turn some pages
I’ll be here when you are ready
To roll with the changes
Yea eee yea, woo

I knew it had to happen
Felt the tables turnin’
Got me through my darkest hour

I heard the thunder clappin’
Felt the desert burnin’
Until you poured on me
Like a sweet sunshower

So if you’re tired of the
Same old story
Oh turn some pages
I’ll be here when you are ready
To roll with the changes
Ohh yeah

(Keep on rollin’) Oh yeah
(Keep on rollin’) Ohh
(Woo ooo)
Roll with the changes
Keep on rollin’