Thanks to superforester Mina for the tip, and Boing Boing for the story. This inventive little boy is on his way to being the next Michel Gondry. Ten minutes you won’t regret watching!
Caine’s Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.
Author Archive for aaron
We superforesters are huge advocates for the fight against modern day slavery. We’ve written numerous posts, spoken with authors and abolitionists, attended the Freedom Awards, sponsored by our friends at Free The Slaves (if you haven’t please check out he amazing work they are doing). One of the greatest advocates in bringing awareness and progress to this movement is CNN’s freedom project, which since it’s launch in March of 2011 has inspired thousands of individuals and organizations to get proactive right now.
Recently they reported on an amazing event held in Atlanta, Georgia in which over 42,000 faith-based college students gathered to hold a candlelight vigil in whcih they raised over 2.6 million dollars to end modern slavery. Yes you heard correct, 2.6 million! What an incredibly hopeful and inspiring message of community gathering to raise light to the darkness and engender change.
You can read the CNN report here: http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/05/college-kids-vow-to-end-slavery/
Throughout time, the unabashed excitement of making a wish has almost always been associated in some capacity with destruction. Whether it’s blowing out the candles on a birthday cake (snuffing fire) or puffing the hundred floating florids off a dandelion, the act of bringing a wish into existence often entails a symbolic act of destruction and rebirth. So it’s no wonder a 7 year old boy battling cancer would want his make a wish to embody a macro variation of a boyhood instinct — full scale demolition!
If you could have any wish in the world, it seems awfully silly, almost a down right waste to spend it on blowing up a building. And yet, I find it an incredibly poignant wish. He can’t wish to fly like superman or climb building like Spidey. He can’t wish for world peace and have it delivered to his hospital room. He can’t even wish to have the cancer that is making him sick burst into flames and disappear from the city streets of his heart. But he can push a big red button and watch a huge building explode. And for a boy of any age, that is pretty damn awesome!
Yup, this is still how my brother and I communicate when no one else is around.
”Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” – Lao Tzu
On Dec 16, 2009, Reed Sandridge embarked on a mission of charity. He had been fired from his job and, for several months, found himself wallowing in the despair and malcontent of unemployment. Unable to change his situation and with no opportunities on the near horizon, Reed decided to change what he could control… his attitude. So he set out to do something meaningful, to make a difference in the world immediately around him. He determined that every day for an entire year, he would give away $10 to someone else who was unemployed and in need. He called it the “year of giving” and, for 365, days Reed set out to meet and aid complete strangers. He shared his story and the stories of the many people he met on his blog, yearofgiving.org.
I featured Reed’s inspiring journey last March, and have been following all the way up to the joyous completion of his year goal last Christmas. Reed considers himself a “Kindness Investor” — a term he coined to express his belief in the virtue of altruism. It’s spin on the classic economic model: the money you invest now will accumulate and help you reap the benefits later, only applied to people. The time you give in service to others will not only enrich them, it will accumulate a wealth of karma and positivity for you.
This isn’t a revelation by any stretch, but rather basic common knowledge, passed down through centuries of religious texts, spiritual teachings and kindergarten songs like “The Magic Penny”. Everyone knows the golden rule of humanity. Most of us are just too busy or self-survivalist to enact it.
And then there’s Betty Londergan.
Just over a year ago, Betty was sitting in the movie theatre watching Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia — a movie about an enterprising young woman who sets out to cook 365 recipes from Julia Child’s famous cookbook, every day for a year… and blog about it. And the question struck Betty, if she were to do something every day for a year, what would it be?
The answer came to her in an instant: she would give. Every single day, she would find a social organization to feature and support with a gift of $100. And she would write about it on her blog, What Gives 365. Sound familiar? On December 31, 2009 (two weeks after Reed Sandridge launched his year of giving campaign), Betty posted her first entry into what would become an amazing network of 365 inspiring stories of people and organizations making big differences in the world.
Now pause for a moment and do the math. Reed gave away $10 dollars to 365 strangers he personally met, walking around the streets of Washington D.C. That’s $3650 for the year. A lot of money for anyone to give away, especially a man who’d lost his job. And here’s Betty Londergan, giving away ten times that amount for a whooping total of $36,500 dollars! That’s more than most people on Planet Earth earn annually.
So, you have to ask yourself, how did Betty afford to be so charitable? When Mark Zuckerberg donates 200 million dollars to public schools, we barely blink an eye. He’s a billionaire, so that’s nothing to him, a drop in his ocean of affluence. In fact, he almost owes it to us, right? The same must be true of Betty, she’s gotta be a millionaire, so 36,500 is a tax write-off. Nothing to be inspired about.
The truth is Betty, just like Reed, found herself reeling for many months after being laid off from a long career as an advertising exec. Not only that, but the plummeting economy and the Wall Street recession collapsed a devastating portion of the financial investments Betty and her husband had spent years accumulating for their future. The only nest egg she had as a safety net was the small inheritance her beloved father left when he passed away in 2003.
Like Reed, instead of spending that much-needed money on self, Betty decided to invest in something different this time, something with a much higher rate of return… she invested in kindness.
“Every day I write about why I chose to give,” Betty writes on her blog, “which hopefully will inspire other people to give a few bucks of their hard-earned money too. Or not. Whatever the outcome, I’ll at least have the deep pleasure of finding, supporting, and shining a light on 365 people, places and things that are making the world a better place.”
On New Year’s Eve 2010, Betty reached her goal of 365 days of giving. Beyond the sheer monetary outpouring, her in-depth research and reporting on the many organizations she supported reads like an encyclopedia of inspiration happening all over the globe. It is an incredible resource of positivity and action. One which personally inspired Betty to transform the way she views her role in the world. In her own words: “Every day, I end up talking to someone who’s doing something really extraordinary — part of this web of interconnected people who are trying to make the world better in their different ways — and it’s so exhilarating. I’m just blown away by them.”
In fact, Betty’s year of giving was so exhilarating that she refuses to stop. But Betty is no different from you or I. She’s an average woman with an extraordinary heart. And that’s what makes her special.
I strongly urge you to check out her site, explore the archives for some unbelievable stories, and get inspired to get involved yourself.
This is my first inspiration information of 2011. And I wanted to highlight this year that doing great deeds doesn’t require herculean efforts. Kindness is an act of humility. And every gift of philanthropy, no matter what the circumstance or size of your bank account, is a gesture of faith and support in the universal uplift of mankind. We give what we can, knowing that the best investment we can make is in service to each other.
“The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul” –G.K. Chesterton
Every day 353,000 people are born. Every day 146,000 people die. This past year, 52 million cars were produced, 285 million computers sold. Globally we cut down 240 square acres of virgin forest (an area the size of Tokyo) each day. There are more than 1 billion malnourished people in the world and equal 1 billion who are obese. Children are starving. On the scale of global hardship and human suffering, 2010 has seemed a particularly difficult year. We’ve experienced a worldwide economic recession. A devastating earthquake that ravaged countless lives in Haiti. Another massive quake in Chile. Flash floods in Pakistan. Crippling volcano eruptions in Iceland and Indonesia. The worst oil spill in environmental history.
It’s pretty easy to focus on the negative. Everywhere you look, every news article you read seems to emphasis the harsh and terrifying brutality of life on earth.
And yet
Every day there are thousands of people falling in love, celebrating the birth of their first or fifth child, rejoicing in the inspiring life of a recently deceased beloved. There are people replanting the forests, feeding the homeless, pulling survivors from the rubble. For every disaster, every act of destruction and suffering, there are equal acts of kindness and compassion. It’s Newton’s third law of Motion, the basics that form both physics and karma: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
On this note, we have featured 34 stories of inspiration this year, all highlighting incredible individuals who are fighting to balance the positivity scale through little everyday acts that are causing big ripples of change. As we look forward into 2011 as a year full of promise, hope and opportunity to make our own positive imprint on the world, we though it important to reflect back on those stories that have moved and affected us the most. (Click the links to be taken to the full stories.)
First there were the incredibly altruistic acts of emergency relief workers diving headfirst to lend support in Haiti. People like Todd Shea, Ben Skinner and Tad Agoglia. Not to mention the United Nations raising a record $10 billion in reconstruction aid.
Around Valentine’s Day, we explored the inexplicable beauty of human experience through the inspiring true love story of Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan.
The man with the world’s biggest heart this year must be Narayanan Krishnan who has devoted his life to caring for the homeless untouchables in India.
We also had a crop of amazingly talented individuals overcoming the adversity of missing limbs. Like Pro Surfer Bethany Hamilton and motivational speaker Nick Vujicic.
The story of Kevin Hines surviving his suicide jump of the golden gate bridge showed the power of miracles in raising hope out of darkness.
But perhaps our most inspiring stories have been those of the younger generation. There seems to be a wave of children who are dreaming impossible dreams and then breathing those dreams into reality. Teenagers like Jordan Romero who at 13 became the youngest person to summit Mt. Everest. Or Zach Bonner who at 12 walked across the entire country in order to raise awareness and money for homeless children.
Looking back like this, it’s easy to see that 2010 was actually a year overflowing with inspiration and positive change. And I am left filled with limitless hope that 2011 will only tip the scales all the way over in favor of kindness, beauty and compassion.
And this overwhelmingly inspiring year wouldn’t be complete without a groovy soulful performance from my personal favorites, Mr B and the PS22 chorus.
Happy New Year Superforest!
“It isn’t the size of the gift that matters, but the size of the heart that gives it.”
~ Eileen Elias Freeman
2010 is rapidly coming to a close, and i find myself looking back on all the many stories and tales of inspiration that have flooded in, many of which I quite simply did not have time to highlight here on Superforest. And in this season of gift giving and cheer, two untold stories kept nagging on my conscience, demanding attention. Sometimes stories are shy, they need to be coerced and hand-held into the light. Others bang drums, hire mariachi bands and simply demand i give them their podium platform. So it was that these next two stories hunted me down and pushed their way to the top of my inspiration list.
First, meet Allen and Violet Large (love the names!). A retired Nova Scotia couple who recently won $11 million dollars in the Canadian lottery.
Whenever someone wins the lottery, the first question asked is of course “what are you gonna do with all that money? And how will it change your life?” For the Large’s, the answer came quick and surprising. They immediately gave (almost) all the money away.
“What you’ve never had, you never miss,” 78-year-old Violet explained. Violet is recently recovering from chemotherapy and cancer treatment. What little money the Larges kept went to covering the remaining medical costs and helping out their family. The rest was delivered in donation to a two page list of charity groups that the couple sat down and made, including the Red Cross, Salvation Army and the two hospitals where Violet underwent treatment.
“It made us feel good. And there’s so much good being done with that money.” Besides, according to the over 35 year married couple, the money was a “headache” that brought only anxiety over the prospect of greedy and crooked people who might try to take advantage of them. ”Money can’t buy you health or happiness. That money that we won was nothing,” an emotional Allen said, his arm around his wife. ”We have each other.”
It’s incredible to imagine winning all of that money and then giving it all away. It’s even more incredible that it happened not once, but twice this year…
Meet Shaw Mcbride, a Georgia native who also struck it big with a winning lottery ticket, to the tune of 152 million. And who also announced upon receiving his check that he would donate it all to charity.
“With money I can only buy things that I don’t need, and it’s not about that,” Shaw states. If you listen to his story, the factors of coincidence and serendipity are astounding. That 6 years prior, Shaw was a troubled youth who found solace and guidance from christian counselor Mitch Boatright, who talked him out of suicide and steered him back to solid ground. That they lost touch until Shaw looked him up on google and the two men met again. That in their reunion meeting with each other, Mitch ran into a minimart to buy some snacks and lottery tickets and on a whim Shaw gave him $20 bucks to buy some tickets. That one of those tickets was the jackpot winner. And that Shaw, in his gratitude to Mitch, determined to put the money toward good causes… it’s a lesson in the cyclical and miraculous power of kindness and karma.
There are many facets to Christmas from the spiritual symbol of nativity to the quality time with family to the inflated consumer accumulation of material products. It’s a season of heightened emotion, full of joy, sensitivity, close proximity to the people you love the most (and often the very same people who drive you the most insane). But at core, the very essence and spirit of Xmas is one of giving. So in this glut of gifts, in our wealth of presents, remember that giving is more important than receiving. And that money is nothing as long as we have each other.
Mele Kalikimaka SF!
-aaron
“I dream for a world and people living in total equality, freedom and fellowship.” –Kiran Kamal Prasad
A few weeks ago I attended to the Freedom Awards — an event thrown by freetheslaves.net to honor those present day abolitionists who have dedicated their lives to fighting modern slavery. I promised then that I would dedicate an inspiration post to each of the four award winners from that tonight. Today’s post focuses on the Harriet Tubman Freedom Award winner: JEEVIKA.
JEEVIKA of India – Harriet Tubman Award winner – 2010 Freedom Awards.
When talking about slavery, nowhere in the world suffers more humans in forced bondage than India. It is a problem not only of vast population, limited resources and rampant poverty, but also of a deeply ingrained socio-cultural caste system. There over 1 billion in India today. More than a quarter of them are dalits — untouchables. For centuries, this lowest caste has been subjected to extreme poverty and humiliation. Simply being born into a dalit family insure a life of hardship and oppression. Not all dalits are slaves, but a significant majority spend their entire lives trapped in debt bondage, perhaps from a small amount borrowed from wealthy farm owners to pay for a family emergency. They’ve been cheated when exploitative landlords claim the debts have never been repaid. Often these debts are passed down by generation, with sons and daughters inheriting the bondage from their fathers fathers. It is a form of illegal and unquestionable slavery without many outlets for recourse.
And that’s where Kiran Kamal Prasad comes in. A former Jesuit priest, Kiran first discovered that the practice of bonded labor was officially outlawed in India over 30 years ago. Ever since, he has worked tirelessly to speak directly with current slaves and powerful land owners to grant their workers’ freedom.
He founded the organization “JEEVIKA” — which is short for Jeeta Vimukti Karnataka, loosely translates as “life free from bondage.” Kiran personally visits the farms where these slaves live and brings them all the knowledge and legal documents they need to claim their freedom. To date he has filed court papers for nearly 20,000 bonded labor slaves in the state of Karnataka (Jeevika estimates that there are over 500,000 people in debt labor in this state alone). On top of that, he has created an action plan for the government to encourage and implement widespread political changes to free more slaves faster.
The goal, says Kiran, is”inculcating in them a sense of freedom and purpose in their lives, and making them resolve to come out of bondage. We motivate them. We encourage them to come out of slavery and be independent, to support their families in a dignified way.
One of these former slaves is a powerfully humble man named Shivanna Puttaiah. Yanked from school at age 12 to work off the family debt as a farm hand, he spent his whole life as a slave. “When I was a bonded laborer, I was treated like an animal. When I see bonded laborers, I have fire in my heart,” Shivanna says.
After learning from JEEVIKA that bonded labor was outlawed in India more that 30 years ago, Shivanna escaped from his farm and filed court papers to win his freedom. Now, he’s become one of the main leaders in JEEVIKA, working to free other slaves just like himself.
“My parents gave me birth,” Shivanna says, “but it is JEEVIKA which gave me a way to lead an independent life. He still works on farms, but now he gets to keep whatever he reaps. And he is happy. A man full of pride.
In their acceptance speech at the awards, Shivanna had no words to thank everyone for the recognition of Jeevika’s work. So instead, he shared his emotions through song…
Roughly translated lyrics to his song:
In the cradle of bonded slavery, on the mattress of thorns, why are you still sleeping? Arise and get up! Enough of your sleep! To the people who are arrogant, never bend your head. Arise and get up, wipe out bonded slavery!”
It is easy to read something like this and pause for a moment with a smile on your face. And perhaps think, ‘there are people out in the world doing wonderful things.” And then just as quickly click away and return to your christmas shopping, your work, your endless unchecked and ever expanding to-do list. But pause for a moment. Think about your day. Your hardships. The weights and pressures that are dragging you down. Think about that vacation you wish you could take. The money you don’t have and all those necessities you could buy if you did. Think about the strained expectations of your parents, or your spouse, your boss and kids. This life that you had is not easy or smooth. It is pitted, full of potholes and ice slicks. Roadblocks and swerving ambulances.
Life is difficult. Yours in particular is undeniably tough. And yet… if you are reading this post, you have the luxury of internet. More than likely you own a computer. It’s probably safe to say you have a cozy bed to sleep in. A wide selection of cuisine available 3 times a day. You are in school, or have a job. You earn a salary, own a car, perhaps indulge occasionally (if not daily) in a $3 cup of coffee. Even if sometimes relationships get strained, you are surrounded by people who love and support you. In short, your life is tough… but it is also undeniably blessed. For in each moment, you are free to chose who you want to be, what you want to do and how you choose to live your life.
80% of the world’s population lives on under $10/day. Over half live on less that $2. And among those are the millions of slaves, who earn no money. People who the very idea of a $3 cup of coffee is a luxury beyond comprehension. I’m not saying don’t buy that coffee, I’m encouraging you to drink that cup as the incredibly fortunate gift it is. Savor every sip, appreciate it as though you can’t drop into any starbucks and get one on whim… for all those billions of people out there who quite simply can’t.
The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. ~Robert Louis Stevenson
It’s a matter of perspective. No major adjustments required, just a refocusing of the lens. When you look at the world from the eyes of a dalit, a slave, a person whose life and freedom do not belong to them… suddenly what little we each have seems like an astounding trove of blessings. All to be cherished, to be grateful for, and finally to be shared.
Thanksgiving is coming right up, and now more than ever is a beautiful time to spread gratitude, joy and love to all around.
I kickstarted the week by sending off my Postcard to Elizabeth McClung. She is the wonderful woman behind the Postcard Project, responsible for uplifting over 5300 stranger’s lives with random handcrafted postcards arriving in the mail. And we at Superforest thought it would be a wonderful karmic gesture to flood Elizabeth’s PO Box with our own little 4×6 goodies.
If you feel inspired, get creative and send Elizabeth a card at this address:
Beth McClung
PO BOX 2560
Port Angeles, WA 98362
Much love,
Aaron
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