Friday, April 20, 2007

EXTRACTS


The Cab Ride
Following is a very beautiful story – it was emailed to me by my friend L. I am putting it here so that more people can read and feel his heart. Yes, you might as well dance, even if life is not the party you hoped for.This may bring a few tears to your eyes……..PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT ‘YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, ~BUT~THEYWILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.

Take a minute to read this good story.

THE CAB RIDE
Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. When I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Underthese circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, and then drive away.

But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to thedoor. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.

So I walked to the door and knocked. “Just a minute”, answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80’s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years.All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.“Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she said.I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.
She kept thanking me for my kindness. “It’s nothing”, I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated”.

“Oh, you’re such a good boy”, she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, and then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”

“It’s not the shortest way,” I answered quickly.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice”.
I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. “I don’t have any family left,” she continued.

“The doctor says I don’t have very long.” I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.
“What route would you like me to take?” I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse thathad once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now”
We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescenthome, with a driveway that passed under a portico.

Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watchingher every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching into her purse.
“Nothing,” I said
“You have to make a living,” she answered.“There are other passengers,” I responded. Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.
“You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said.
“Thank you.”

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of thatday, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient toend his shift?

What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware - beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

You can help make the world a little kinder and more compassionate.

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance.


From novel “Term Limits”, by Vince Flynn

  • It is easy to say you understand something when you haven’t experienced it, and it is easier to tell someone to get over something when you have never been through it. You can say you understand, but you will never really understand until you have lived it. Ø There was something distant about him. He was too stuck on himself.

  • From mills & boon story: It is often the ones who make the least fuss who have the most wrong with them.

  • Tomorrow would be soon enough for regrets, for recrimination – tonight an indefinable magic prevailed.

  • From the book, “Elvis and me” by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley: Despite his moralizing, I feared Elvis wasn’t always faithful to me. His bantering with some of the other girls at his house made me think that he might be intimately familiar with them. I had to learn not to take his words at herd. It was disappointing but it was just his way. I couldn’t help noticing that there had been a slight change in Elvis. He had leftGermany a gentle, sensitive, and insecure boy; through the course of the evening I would see that he now was mischievous and self confident to the point of cockiness.

I felt out of sync with the private jokes and crazy high jinks. Elvis’s sense of humour was contagious. He laughed about things that often wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, yet anyone around him would usually end up laughing too.I loved babying Elvis. He had a little boy quality that could bring out the mother instinct in any woman, a beguiling way of seeming utterly dependent. It was this aspect of his charm that made me want to hold him, shower him with affection, protect him, fight for him and yes, even die for him. Life takes such surprising turns. Just when you are getting confident, along comes the unexpected.I was numb. This is not the man I knew. I instinctively withdrew my affection, numbed, my thoughts suspicious, my heart aching.


We both acted as if nothing had been said. It was at times like that I wished Elvis and I had the ability to truly communicate with each other, to confront our insecurities, fears and frustrations instead of pretending these feelings were not there. We probably would have been surprised at how much understanding we both really had.


I made a whole new circles of friends with whom I felt accepted for myself. The martial arts gave me such confidence and assurance that I began to experience my feelings and express my emotions as never before. Accustomed to suppressing my anger, I could honestly vent it now without the fear of accusations or explosions. I stopped apologizing for my opinions and laughing at jokes I didn’t find amusing.


Bored and restless, he increased his dependence on chemicals. He thought speed helped him escape from destructive thinking, when in reality it gave him false confidence and unnatural aggressions. He started losing perspective on himself and others. To me, he became increasingly unreachable. From my adolescence, he had fashioned me into the instrument of his will.

  • What you can handle calmly in your usual public style still can upset you privately.\
  • When you write, you can lie. There is suspense of disbelief – from the movie, “Basic Instinct”
  • It seems a pity that the frail craft of love should come a stinker like this.
  • I don’t say I became glib at this juncture, but I certainly became a dash sight glibber than I had been.
  • This aching heart can’t bring itself up to the scratch and tell you the position of affairs.
  • I was an extrovert who operated on intuition with absolutely no deliberation most of the time.
  • From rags to riches, and from riches to emptiness.
  • Just a vulnerable sick woman riddled with loneliness.
  • If things get on top of you, have a good cry
  • Never in my life, have I pushed so hard. I think I was brain-dead that night.
  • Psychological scars takes longer to heal.
  • Most people don’t know what they are capable of until they are put to the test.
  • Though they struggled, we children were last to feel it. Rather than do without, we made the best of what we had.
  • This was one crisis too many. It felt like a nightmare where you slither through endless ludicrous disaster, knowing it a nightmare and that you escape soon, yet unable to break free and wake safe in your bed with someone friendly soothing you. – From the novel, “The Iron hand of Mars” by Lindsey Davis.

From Reader's Digest

To make amends; to heal a friendWriting to other person, be it in the form of a postcard or e-mail, is a smart first move in re-establishing severed ties, according to experts. The process is free of the thought clouding emotion that can come with a telephone conversation or face-to-face meeting. “Writing a letter gives the author a chance to refine what he or she feels and wants to say and a letter gives the receiver time to mull it over.”- RD, Jan 2000


Jennifer Lopez: When things come into your live at a certain moment, it is for a reason.
Being comfortable with who are makes a woman sexy. People think sexy, big breast, curvy body, no cellulite. It is not that. Take the girl at the beach with the cellulite legs wearing her bathing suit the way she likes it, walking with a certain air, comfortable with herself. That woman is sexy. Then you see the perfect girl who is really thin, tugging at her bathing suit, wondering how her hair looks. That is not sexy.
It is important for all type of women to know that you don’t have to fit a prototype of what one person thinks is beautiful in order to be beautiful or feel beautiful. I don’t look at people and see color and race. I see inside.
There are all these ideals about what is perfect and what is beautiful and what is smart, but the most appealing thing is, that which is me is nobody else.


Harrison Ford: I was raised democratic.…I thought the war was wrong. I thought killing people was wrong unless they were crawling over the fence. I had been working so hard, I had practically forgotten I was lonely.

“These drivers’”, I muse to her one day. “They seem too good to be true. How did you find so many nice, wise people all in one place?”“It just happened”, Beth answers. “I rode and I guess they were just there”I look at her brimming with life. And I realize that nothing “just happens”. She has sought out friends where others might not look. She has taken the time to weed out drivers who are decent and kind from those who are indifferent or hostile. Her invitation to ride with her buses didn’t “just happen” either, I realize. Beth may have wanted me to meet her drivers because I need them too.

  • I couldn’t see tomorrow – it was a victory to survive today – From Readers Digest
    To be a person, you must have flair.
  • Forgiveness: not denying you are angry or pretending the injury didn’t hurt. You can forgive the offender but choose not to resume relationship.


Jet Lee: I spent more time learning Buddhism than English because while English can help me find work, Buddhism helps me understand life. And not just this life but also future lives. My dad once said, you wouldn’t worry so much about what people thought of you if you knew how seldom they did. Every man has his faults. It all depends on whether he has enough good qualities to counterbalance them.


Anne Frank: Surely the time will come when we are people again and not just jews. We can never become just Dutch or just English or representative of any country for that matter. We will always be jews as well. But then, we will want to be.
That was one day in my life and it happened a long time ago.
As often happens in life, events sweep us away from those in our past.


Don’t pursue glory, pursue excellence.
I’m not god, I’m just some guy.


A TEACHER WHO BELIEVED
He was a teacher who challenged me to reach, the man whose demands of accountability destroyed the notion that poverty gave me an excuse to expect less of myself. He was the teacher who saw the woman I could become. At a time when his concerned efforts as a teacher seemed insignificant, useless even, he was one of the courageous few who invaded my darkness and made investments in the future kids likes me. He taught us through his actions despite differences in race, color and class, beneath exterior, people were people. And that those who dare to take the risk of caring, even if they themselves would not receive were truly special.

**********************************************************************************

--It didn't really matter whether you and blacks really understood each other. you could just laugh. it was good enough.

--It lasted no more than a minute or two, but it was something to hold on to.

--I lay on my mattress in a wintry bleakness of spirit to think things over.

--Harrowed with guilt and bleeding internally for your suffering fellowmen.

--Savage latencies that seemed to lie buried in their hearts.

-- Recoil in horror of

--It is that state of ...quandary that I am trying to cribe, but I can't get it. I can only feel it.


May be temptation urged, she could treat it purely for what it was – two people enjoying a revival of something that had once been between them; something that was over really something that could never, ever be allowed to happen again.

Let tonight happen, purely for old time’s sake, in memory of what they had once been to each other, then may be she could exorcise the ghost of their relationship once and for all

Life would be of the same dimension here as else where. You need not go searching for heaven away from hell. It is just where you are.


When someone doesn’t love you the way you expect them to, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love you at all


Life is beautiful with imperfection. We got to accept things as they are. We can’t change the nature of things. We can’t understand everything. We got to have faith inside, a belief. He hated her…he looked at her in scorn. The hatred burning behind his eyes. His look said, he didn’t mind killing her there. She didn’t back off either. She took her position and stood there as if to say “If he hits me, I will hit him back.”

SMS (Foward)

1.Certain friends touch your heart and you can't stop thinking about them. That is the kind of friend you are...far yet so near. Simple yet so precious.

2. (On Friendship Day) Today is the day we can forget everything about bad things that happened in past one year and say only this: Dear friend, I'm glad we are still around each other after so long. Thanks for being there.

3. Life is full of beautiful things like soft sunsets, painted rainbows, delicate blossoms, love and laughter...quiet moments and fantastic friends like you.

4. Friends are those who care without hesitation, who love without limitation, who give without expectation and who remember without even communicating.

5. A heart truly in love never loses hope but always believes in the promise of love, no matter how long the time and how far the distance.

6. The sunrise from the eastern mountain could only bring light and glory of the morning but you lighted my heart and instilled upon me the glory of loving you. As every birthday bids you goodbye, may you always realize the dharma a step further.

7. In life, God doesn't give you people you want. Instead he gives you people you need. To teach you, to hurt you, to love you and to make you exactly the way he wants you to be the best.

8. In life, love is never planned, nor does it happen for a reason. But when the love is real, it becomes your plan for life and becomes your reason to live.

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