This Thing Called Life by Ki O’Shea

….When you know better, you do better …

Kindness is something learned. I don’t think I understood this until… this week. So this helps with understanding that racism is learned. Hate is learned. It’s not just something that you are born with.

Someone once told me that everyone does not carry your gift. My gift? My gift is this optimism about love, being able to help everyone, and seeing the good in everyone. We all have different natural gifts and some are not even aware of their gifts yet… I wonder how long it takes?

For me, another one of my gifts is being kind. Another is being compassionate. I’m truly a “love” child. Another is loving others. And the others … we will talk about those later.

My trip to Jerusalem was beautiful. It was beautiful because I was with another genuine soul. We laughed, we had girl talk. We laughed so hard daily! We bonded more. We shared lessons with each other.

My trip was beautiful because I was already happy and I was able to focus on enjoying what I saw and learned.

My trip was beautiful because we met other people to share memories with. We met other kind people.

One would think of kind and nice and loving people to take trips here to the holy land, but the reality is you have everyday people who come to see the world.

Walking from Bethelham it started to rain. We finished visiting the place where Jesus was born, touched the star, learned about the 14 points, and as we left the rain came down sideways. This meant that we would have to walk about 800 to 1000 meters in the pouring rain. Our tour group consisted of over 30 people. People from all over the US and the Phillipines. We had young children to elderly men and women. My soror and I walked and noticed one of our fellow tourists; an elderly lady walking.

The rain made the ground slippery. It also made it difficult to see because of how it came down. We immediately grabbed her hands on either sides. Someone captured the picture once we got inside the building. Rain was all in my face and neither of us had on rain gear, but we held on to her hands. We walked her down each and every step and then up the stairs until we got to the bus. We walked slowly and carefully down the sidewalk to make sure she didn’t fall, we told her over and over her when she thanked us that it was ok. For us, this was the norm. But as

I was told awhile back, my gift is not the gift that everyone else has. When we reached our destination, another tourist that was with us shared that she hopes she goes to heaven with me. Initially I didn’t understand, but she shared how nice it was that I took the woman’s hand and how nice of a person I was. She shared would have never even thought to do anything like that. She continued for a few minutes and even came back to add on to how impressed she was about our actions. Before I could open my mouth, I shut it because this was yet another learning lesson. We think that people are like us and obviously they are not.

Each grow up in different environments, have their own established customs and traditions, so much of what we see in life is based upon this.

This is why my son is seen carrying a lot of my characteristics. The other day, my teenager had to go with me to get my hair braided. Luckily it was only two braids, but he sat there and everyone complimented me on how polite he was. Something broke while we were there and he instantly dropped his phone and went to help my hair dresser. This was noticed. My teenage child would have never done that someone said. For us it is the norm…

Such lessons help me to understand that what we go through in life is different from people that we meet

How we handle things is different …

Take the time to realize your gift and make an effort to pass it on…

#ThisThingCalledLife… what is your gift?