Hello, bloggers!
One of my favorite things to do in Ireland is sit by the cliff, watching the birds and the sea and thinking about anything and everything under the sun.
So I was sitting on the cliff the other day and thinking about role models.
Who are the new role models? We tend to think of politicians and actors and singers and religious leaders...
But I always come back to a documentary I saw many, many years ago, and it’s constantly in my memory bank. It showed images of people in their everyday lives, and it was really about the dignity of the human being.
Two figures that it showed, still come to me all the time...
One was an elderly gentleman in India or Pakistan. He was living in a car. It showed him getting ready for his job as a doorman in a swanky hotel.
As he shaved his face, he had a bowl of water—a very thin bowl made out of tin—and it probably had an inch of water in it.
After he shaved, he washed his face and then took the water and dumped it on his head. That was his shower.
I think of that often when I take my shower. I think about how we take for granted the “American shower,” which is so hot and soothing in the morning—and here’s this man with just a little bit of water.
But there he is, dressed up in his white uniform and gloves, so proud, going off to do his duty.
It really reminds us of the true dignity of people.
The other person I remember in the documentary was a woman in Africa. She and her family lived in a straw and dirt hut. When she came out of it, she was all dressed up with her two little daughters, both of whom were in white dresses that you couldn’t see a spot of dirt on. They were probably on their way to church or school.
These are the real role models of the world.
The leaders who emerge as we continue this new millennium—those are the people they really have to respond do: the people who are truly the heart and soul of the human race.
In the time that is to come, history will not be written by the prophets of doom, the death and destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
It is the government of the people, by the people, and for the people that will not perish from the earth—because of the dignity and majesty and love we have of the human race.
And that is what the role models show us: this elderly man with his bowl for shaving; and this wonderful mother so dedicated to her children... They will be the leaders of the world.
Matt