ordinary and unnoticed
Given the over abundance of in your face reality shows where we learn the nitty gritty details of the lives of others, the soul exposing talk shows where nothing seems sacredly kept secret ..... given our collective penchant to put our personal stuff out in cyberspace through blogs, websites, on facebook and myspaces ......... given our ability to talk it up, share it, express it, promote, float and denote it all, it's surprising to consider just how many people are out there living a full and giving life unnoticed. Not only that, they don't care if they are noticed. No public recognition is wanted and none is given. No newspaper articles are written about them because the activities they perform seem so tiny..........so ordinary that it doesn't make for a good story. Their unnoticed lives don't sell papers. It's not why they do what they do. Yet, they are the solid backbone of our villlages, towns and cities doing all that they do. Their tiny offerings thread together to form the essence of what community is all about.
For an hour twice a week, a 45 year old woman steps out of her busy life and work schedule to deliver hot meals to seniors. Her family is aware that she does this, but even her friends don't know.
Every Wednesday, two university students take the bus across town to spend a couple of hours running a reading program in a public housing community centre. They had learned about the need for volunteers and decided to take up the challenge.
A retired gentleman found out last summer that a handfull of men who were living in rundown rooming houses had been given the opportunity to move into brand new one bedroom subsidized apartments. Without being asked, he rented a van and helped move them all into their new homes. This same man hand delivers Christmas hampers to 50 families in need.
Invisibly doing tiny tasks unnoticed.
A Dad takes a late lunch so he can spend an hour helping out at his son's school library on Thursday afternoons. He's grown fond of one little boy who stood apart from his classmates, a little rough around the edges. Now they meet to catch up on the latest sports scores and to read a new book they choose together.
A group of stay at home Moms meet on Tuesday mornings at the same school to count the change and to put the hot lunch orders together for the whole school. They've been doing it for a couple of years now, and have all become friends who stay in touch throughout the week.
On Sundays several people from the same congregation meet in the church kitchen to make dozens of sandwiches and sweets that they will deliver to many marginalized people who live in rooming houses throughout the city. A neighbour offers to tutor the child next door in math.
Quietly walking the talk unnoticed.
A woman who is paid minimum wage for her 20 hours a week part-time job at the Methadone clinic stretches her days into nights ensuring the local street people are all accounted for. She always checks under the bridge to make sure the guy who has a tendancy of passing out has left for the shelter.
The young couple prepare dinner together on Friday nights. Just before they sit down to enjoy their meal, one of them runs a wrapped portion of it next door to the elderly lady who lives alone.
The teenager takes it upon herself to get up early after a snowstorm to shovel her neighbour's driveway. She knows they have had a rough winter health wise.
Last summer an elderly man who had lived in the same rooming house room for close to 25 years passed away. He had lived the last years in a wheelchair, bound to oxygen because of his emphysema. Every Sunday afternoon a nice person from the church down the street showed up with a delicious sandwich and a sweet. He always looked forward to the simple meal, more so because he found it was always delivered by the same someone who was a smiling friendly angel. His death was unnoticed by many, except the others who lived in the building and the friendly faced weekly angel.
Somehow, despite living on a meagre monthly cheque, he managed to scrape and save 5oo dollars over the years..............his unnoticed life savings. A couple of weeks after he passed away, a letter arrived to the church down the street. In it was a letter from this man's son informing the church pastor that 500 dollars was donated to the sandwich program so that others would know the feeling of being served a meal by a smiling angel.
And so it goes.................quietly, signficantly magnificent.
For more stories about the extraordinary ordinary people in our lives, I invite you to visitmy other blog Awareness
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