Chapter 18. Be a Giver
To this day, my mom will get frustrated on occasion and say “I’m so stupid.” I tell her that she is the most amazing person in the world. We can’t all be perfect in every area of life. A great pitcher on a baseball team may stink at batting, and in fact, most do. A professional racecar driver like Jeff Gordon, as good as he may be, would get destroyed if he played a one-on-one basketball game against Michael Jordan and vice versa. So Mom has trouble spelling and has other minor learning disabilities. But as a mother who was handed a pile of adversity, she was the absolute best she could be. And can anyone ask for more than that? Not the way I see it. When it comes to love, caring, and giving all of herself to other people, she is the Tiger Woods of mothers, the best at what she does. I tell you this story because we never really know what people are going through or what they have gone through in their life. Looking from the outside, we can never know what someone else’s obstacles may be, and they may not know ours. We shouldn’t assume and judge, but we do, all the time. Know in your heart that the world will be a better place and your relationships will be stronger if you don’t judge too harshly, and if you don’t form opinions about people or circumstances without the facts. We must learn to accept others, sometimes with- out an explanation and always without judgment. There are thousands of stories like my mother’s, everywhere, every day. Try to be aware of them and the lessons they can teach you. I was recently reminded yet again not to judge. I am 100% guilty of being on my cell phone way too much. I have a lot of dif- ferent things going on in my life, and time is very important. So, if I am driving, I optimize my time by making necessary phone calls. And I know that trying to dial and answer phone calls while driving is not the smartest thing to do, because it is definitely dis- tracting. Luckily, I have never done anything that caused an accident or even came close. But I see why some states ban cell phone use in cars, and I now have a voice-activated system.
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