BE HELPFUL TO PEOPLE

People who like people certainly can be helpful here by sharing your experiences and insights. Please e-mail to wishing@juno.com (subject: "Helpful") or use form below.

There are many ways to be helpful to people, depending upon one's age and abilities. Just to list some:

Smile and be cheerful, to help brighten the day for those around you.
Hold a door open.
Offer your seat to a older person, or young mother.
Carry groceries for your mom, or an elderly or disabled person.
Wash the car for someone, just to be nice.
Teach a child to swim.
Carry the garbage out.
Help do the laundry, fold and put away clothes.
Clean up after yourself...even small toddlers can help pick up their toys.
Deliver Meals on Wheels for the elderly and shut-ins.
Visit lonely people in nursing homes.
Volunteer in your local hospital.
Record books for the blind.
Become a Big Brother or Big Sister to a child who needs one.
Help cook or serve in a soup kitchen for the poor and homeless.
Drive a friend, neighbor, etc. to a doctor's appointment. Shop for a shut-in.
Send an anonymous cashiers check to a person in real need.
Donate blood.
Become a volunteer remedial reading tutor.
Rehearse and put on (dance, sing, band, etc.) shows in nursing homes.
Learn sign language so you can interprete for a deaf person.
Make phone calls for your school, PTA, church, or club.
Pay attention to local needs and get actively involved.
Be polite.
Train a search and rescue dog, then go out when needed.
Volunteer with the Red Cross or other such organization.
Become a mentor in your field to a young person.
Lend money to a person who will be able to pay it back some day.
Babysit for the young couple whose relatives live too far away to help.
Elderly sit for the middle-aged couple whose relatives won't help.
And most important of all: lend an ear to anyone who asks.

LISTEN (Anonymous)

When I ask you to listen to me
and you start giving advice,
you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem,
you have failed me, strange as that may seem.

Listen! All I asked was that you listen,
not talk or do - just hear me.

Advice is cheap: 25 cents will get you both Dear Abby and
Billy Graham in the same newspaper.

And I can do for myself; I'm not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.

But when you accept as a simple fact that I do feel what I feel,
no matter how irrational, then I can quit trying to convince
you and can get about the business of understanding what's
behind this irrational feeling.
And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice.

Irrational fears make sense when we understand what's behind them.

Perhaps that's why prayer works, sometimes, for some people
because God is mute, and He doesn't give advice or try to fix things.
"They" just listen and let you work it out for yourself.

So, please listen and just hear me. And, if you want to talk, wait
a minute for your turn; and, I'll listen to you.

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To comment or add ways to be helpful, send e-mail to wishing@juno.com, Subject: Helpful.