I’ll let the video speak for itself…

I have to admit, I’ll never understand suburbia. I get out of my car and I see perfectly manicured lawns as far as the eye can see. I would understand if one or two people had spent a lot of time on their lawns, perhaps gardening hobbyists, people with a fairly obsessive nature, etc.

But every single lawn is perfectly manicured. All I can wonder is , “Doesn’t anybody here have anything else to do? Does lawn manicuring hold such a high priority in their lives that, with all the competing pressures of modern life, they somehow all find the time to pay this much attention to grass?”

Then one of the neighbors comes out and starts pushing her lawn mower across an already low-cut lawn, somehow managing to cut it even lower. This is a lady with children. Is it just me, or is a huge section of society misplacing their priorities? Remember, your priorities are not what you say they are, but rather how you spend your life.

I have nothing against lawns, please be assured. But I just cannot imagine having that kind of time with nothing more important than grass to attend to.  Of the dozens of things on my to-do list, the lawn is always there and it is almost always at the bottom of the list.  But it’s not just the lawn.  The lawn is one very visible example.  There are other less-important things that many people give lots of time to, as well.

How do you spend your life? What are your priorities?

As suipporters of the 12for12k charity innitiative, we are proud to introduce the April charity we are supporting.  Yehu.org is a microfinance organization in the rural coastal region of Kenya for the poor, run by the poor. It provides financial and other support services for small businesses owned by very poor people.

Yehu operates in conjunction with Choice Humanitarian, an international NGO specializing in village development. It was created based on the principles and procedures of the world-renowned Grameen Bank.

Yehu Microfinance works with BasaBody and Coast Coconut Farms to empower poor rural entrepreneurs in Kenya to help create a sustainable living for themselves. This is done through enhanced accessibility to sustainable financial services, business opportunities, and skills training.  In other words, we are not giving them fish; we are giving them fishing rods so that they can catch their own fish.  This is the part I really like.  From a “happiness” perspective, we are helping people both materially and psychologically, by giving them the means to create a worthwhile life for themselves.

Please contribute:

Is there a good reason to fight?  Most people will say yes, Mahamta Gandhi notwithstanding.  It is just to fight in the cause of justice.  The rational for Western nations removing the Taliban from Afghanistan was to free women from slavery and all Afghanis from various levels of opression.   Most people in the world, whether they like the war or not, seem to agree that this sort of situation justifies fighting.

Beyond saving people from opression, slavery and torture, is there any reason why fighting should be tolerated?  I suggest not.  The fact is that fighting does nothing to reduce anger.  Acting upon one’s anger actually feeds the anger, as I wrote in Climb Your Stairway to Heaven: the 9 habits of maximum happiness.  Yet fighting persists, despite common sense and criminal laws against assault.

The latest on this is in a Maclean’s article that rips away the ludicrous arguements that keep grown men fighting in the NHL (National Hockey League).  The death of player Donald Sanderson is bringing the issue to the surface again, but seems to be falling on deaf ears amongst NHL leadership.   My question is, “What planet do these guys live on?”

Actually, I have two other questions, which I wrote as follows in a letter to the editor of Maclean’s:

There are two big questions to answer.  First, fighting is not “part of the game”.  In fact, it is against the rules; that’s why there are penalties against it.  The only question for the leagues is whether the penalty matches the crime.  And that raises the second question, because there are already penalites in Canada for punching someone, which is a crime called “assault”.  Why do thousands of police officers, night after night, watch live broadcasts of crimes in progress and in recent memory only Marty McSorley and Todd Bertuzzi were charged?

So what can you do?  back off from potential fights.  Don’t express your anger with fists or harsh tones of voice.  As I said to my daughters this morning, “At 5 and 7 years old, don’t you think you girls can control your body parts?  Isn’t it a bit embarrassing that you let your hand hit your sister and your tongue shout mean things you know you shouldn’t?”