Smiling at someone as you walk past them, helping someone carry their groceries to their car, paying for someone’s morning coffee, it’s the little things that can change a person’s day.
I feel that sometimes we can get so caught up in our own lives and our own busy schedules that we forget to look at the people around us. We can let some of the smallest things, such as dropping your coffee on the floor change our entire attitude/day. But if we just looked at the people around us we would realize that some of our problems aren’t as big as we make them out to be.
The other day was Bell Canada’s annual “Let’s Talk Day.” This campaign is used to raise funds for mental health awareness and funds for mental health initiatives. For every hash tag #BellLetsTalk on Twitter, every share of a Bell Let’s Talk picture on Facebook and every text message/long distance call made on a Bell cell phone 5 cents was donated to mental health initiatives. The last I read there was over 5 million dollars donated to the campaign because of a simple hash tag, share, text and/or call. The whole point of the campaign is to not only to raise awareness but also get rid of the stigma attached to mental illness.
When I saw this picture posted today I couldn’t help but smile at how appropriate the timing was. Molly Burke, a Me to We speaker, was diagnosed with depression due to bullying because she went blind at the age of 14. I myself have been a victim of bullying in the past. Thankfully I never became clinically depressed, but that does not mean I didn’t have moments of depression. My parents are the reason behind my strength, they are the ones who changed my life.
Now what I want you to think about is how you can change the life of someone around you. Maybe it’s through a random act of kindness or maybe it’s just by smiling at someone as you pass them on the street. They don’t have to be someone you know or even like, but you can still change their life. Think about all the people you interact with on a daily basis and think of ways that you can change their lives, and next time you start to get upset because something didn’t go your way try and remember all the people out there who are dealing with something much bigger on a day-to-day basis and they are just waiting for that one person to come around and change their life.
Meghan 