We can call get so engrossed with our own lives and problems that we forget that others may need a helping hand. Not just this year, not just this time of year but every day, every year.

For the most part our biggest issues are overeating during the holiday season. Finding time to workout, making time to cook and buy presents.

We can help others. We can extend a helping hand. Take a minute to help someone. We will always be one world and we must be a world full of hope. That is what I want my legacy to be.

In 1984 I was in my first year of college.  Bob Geldof and Midge Ure formed the supergroup Band Aid  to raise money for anti-famine efforts in Ethiopia by releasing the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”  On 25 November 1984, the song was recorded at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, and was released in the UK four days later.[4][5] The single surpassed the hopes of the producers to become the Christmas number one on that release.

Looking back it seemed like an obvious hit but at the time, it was a risk and a chance taken to help others. As time moved on we see the ethnocentric problems but their heart was in the right place and they actually did something. 

The group reunited with current stars in 2014 to bring help to the Ebola Crisis in West Africa.

You don’t need to be a superstar to help those around you. You can get involved with groups within your community.

Habitat for Humanity, No Kid Hungry ,  The Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity. 

GIVING, like politics starts local. You do not need to think big to have a big impact.  One of my employees travels with bags of sandwiches that she gives out to people asking for money at the side of the road. She has passed this lesson on to her daughters.

I fully believe that no man stands so tall as when he stoops down to help another.

The other day I was driving when I saw a rising column of black smoke from behind a Parking lot. I pulled into the lot at the same time as a few others and we ran into the woods to see if anyone needed help. We came across a homeless camp of 3 or 4 tents engulfed in flames. IT IS WINTER HERE IN NH. Living in a tent in the woods behind the Dunkin’ Donuts in winter in New Hampshire is not a great way to live. We cannot help the unhoused population without also addressing mental health and drug abuse. 

WHY DO I THINK WE CAN DO IT?

We have been to the moon. We have electric cars and have figured out ways to use the wind and the sun to create clean power. Many of us carry a phone in our pocket that gives you access to information almost instantly. We can do it. If we choose to. Paraphrasing from JFK’s speech at Rice University in 1962, Why choose this as a goal? You may as well ask, why climb the highest mountain? We chose to go to the Moon in the 1960s and in this decade we can fix the problems of drug addiction, homelessness and mental health and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.