Happy New Year - Good Deeds to Come

What do you say when mental illness takes the life not only of its sufferer, but scores of victims around him? How do you recover from that? How can those families EVER expect to recover. You know I'm talking about that terrible day at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut. Everyone's talking about it, or trying not to think about it at all.

If the right people had been in the right place at the right time, if those who needed help had received it, if there were an answer to the madness, these things could stop happening, right? Not just Sandy Hook or Columbine or University of Texas at Austin, but malls in Newport Beach (Calif.) and Clackamas (Wash.), movie theaters in Aurora (Colo.) and Santa Antonio (Texas), political gatherings. If people stepped up to help each other, we could end world hunger, provide clean water to even the farthest reaches of the world, bring about world peace.

I know. It's a pipe dream. But why not? Why not dream?

As we begin a new year, let's do it full of hope, with lessons learned. Let's step up to the plate and be better people.

Thanks to Ann Curry, an author, formerly Newsweek columnist and now with one of the remaining major news networks, people throughout the U.S. are stepping up to share their random acts of kindness. It's inspired me to revive A Year of Living Charitably. If you're interested in learning more about my alternate blog, being inspired by others or reading more about other "random acts" blogs and websites, click this linky.