I was just reading David Cain’s blog over at Raptitude, where today he has an interview with Neil Pasricha of 1000 Awesome Things. I ended up writing a really long comment, and thought I’d just adapt it into a small blog post to share with the rest of you. It would probably help to read David’s post, and then come back to this one, but it’s not required. “Required,” like I’m a teacher telling you guys what to read. Eh, whatever. Let’s proceed.

David, you’re right – the thing that first attracted me to Neil’s stuff was the way he could capture everything that I (we?) secretly find awesome in life, and express it so well.

The idea that life’s not always pretty, and we have a choice in how to respond . . . that’s a theme that comes up a lot for me in what I do (with ItStartsWith.Us). David’s talked about it here, I’ve talked about it on my site, and Neil, now you’re talking about it. It’s just a fact, man. This is a rough world, and bad things happen. All. The. Time. You mentioned your best friend dying and your wife leaving during the course of your project, and very similar things have happened in my life during the course of mine. The way I see it, you have two choices: focus on the pain and on yourself, or continue to turn outwards, focusing on the joy you can give to others and also experience for yourself.

We’re not perfect. No one is. Humans are messy creatures, and we just wade through life, doing the best we can. Hopefully when we’re done, we’ve tried our hardest to improve the situation for those around us, and we’ve had some successes. And where we’ve failed, hopefully we have forgiveness.

A lot of this stuff is really, really emotional. One of the hardest parts of my job is getting so many emails from so many hurting people asking for help, and knowing that I (we) can only help one or two at a time. “And what of the rest?” says my brain. “What of all the people you’re ignoring and leaving behind?”

Those are hard questions for any of us as we go through life. I was talking to the founder of Camp Heartland (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101020812-333891,00.html) the other day – it’s a free camp for HIV-infected and impacted kids each summer, where they have everything they need, and can feel like “normal” kids for a week. It’s a fantastic project, but it’s tough – they lose kids every year – kids who come to camp this summer, but aren’t alive the next. I asked this guy, “You see more than your fair share of pain and suffering in this world. How do you get through that without becoming broken yourself?” His response was pretty cool. He said, “We all see so much pain and suffering in this world. And when we see it, we have choices: we can do nothing, we can do our fair share, or we can do more than our share. I’m choosing to do more than my share, and that’s the best I can do.”

And I guess that’s it. We’re not Superman, so we can’t do it all. But we can do more than our share. And that’s a net gain.

I’m going to try to look at it like this: The more pain I see, the more opportunities I have to help, and the more options I have to choose where I (we) can make the greatest impact. I’m going to try to look at it as an opportunity, and not as a crushing wave of despair. I feel like that’s the best I can do.

I’d love to hear what you guys think. There is so much pain all around you every day . . . how do you handle it? What’s your philosophy?

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