Say "Thank You" from the heart...

Saturday, February 27, 2010
Say "Thank You" from your heart...

Say Thank You

I am sitting in the car with my parents, we’re driving to Rochester New York, from Port Elgin Ontario. I was invited to attend a professional lacrosse game, one that just two years ago, would likely have found me competing in it. The owner of the home team, a man I have never formerly met or played for, has pledged to give my family $1000.00 for each goal his team scores tonight.

The team is filled with players whom I have battled alongside and against for years, more years than I can remember. Pat O’toole, a soon to be hall of fame goaltender and perennial representative for the Professional Lacrosse Players Association, mentioned to mister Curt Styres, that my family was doing some fundraising to help offset our medical bills and lost income. His response was something along the lines of “well we can give him a jersey to raffle off, but we can do a lot more than that as well”. If times were different it may very well be that I’d be battling against Curt’s players tonight. If I was having a typical night, I’d like to think he’d be cursing me and calling me any number of well deserved names. Instead he is instructing his staff to get us VIP passes and he welcomed us into his suite with his family and he treated us with incredible dignity and respect. We met his mother Vera, a lovely and kind woman who had a very interesting pearl of wisdom to help me with my healing. Here were children running around and a beautiful little baby just the same age as my 3 month old daughter. The arms of the lacrosse family opened up and invited us in and made us safe and comfortable.

My time recovering has taught me many things. One of them is that one person’s illness can bring out the absolute best in others. I write these thoughts down as way to burn them in to my mind, and a way to provide myself reminders. One day soon I will be much healthier than I have been recently, and nature will have its way and be inching me closer to taking things for granted yet again, these memories should serve as a cold ice cube on the sunburned back of life. They should make me sit up straight and remember that things can change in an instant, and when they do, everything will be fine and some incredible people will be there if you are open to finding them. And I had better pay back into the system because it sure is taking good care of us.

After the game….

Now, sitting here in the hotel room just after the game in Rochester, I am a little overwhelmed and am trying to process the lessons in life that I just learned. “just say it from the heart”… that will be the take away from today. Sometimes “Thank You” doesn’t seem like enough because we say it everyday. We say it to someone who holds a door open for us, we say it to our kids when they do something nice, to our spouses, to taxi drivers, we say it to total strangers. What do you say to someone who you have never met, but has heard about your story and hands your family $23,000 to lighten the burden that you are experiencing.


“You say Thank You and you say it from the heart and they will know.” Wendy Styres February 27th, 2010.

Never ever forget that lesson.

Jim Moss

Excellent horoscope for Tuesday Feb 9th

My recent horoscope - so true this one is...

Most of your energy today will be focused on matters of reputation and image, Pisces. There is a lot of support from many quarters for you right now, and others are willing to give assistance. Even those who either openly oppose you or do so in a clandestine manner inadvertently act to your advantage by giving you the opportunity to show of a skill or ability to someone who matters. Follow your intuition and be flexible, and try to stay away from those who are more focused on happy hour than personal power.
Post my horoscope to my profile!

Finding my LEGO spirit again…

Finding my LEGO spirit again

 

Jennifer and I were at the mall yesterday and we wandered into the LEGO Store. I wanted to see what the new school of space lego looked like. In many ways it had changed, there were logos and cross branding and new types and styles, but its heart and soul was still the same.

 

The store was awesome, it was bright and filled with colors, there was tons of LEGO for kids to play with. They had high tech video stations were you could scan a box and it would play a video and show what could be done with the blocks inside. I was really very inspired and my heart was filled with memories from my childhood. It seems that I am returning to the inner nerd that was creative, and playfull, loved copmputers and learning. (when I use the term "nerd" know that I mean nothing negative, I was in an advanced learning program as a child and I affectionitly referred to us as NERDS)

 

The greatest part of the Lego store was when I turned around and my son was elbow deep in two tubs of lego blocks and was so engrossed I struggled to get his attention. It reminded me so much of myself and how LEGO made me feel as a kid. I spoke with the store manager, a guy named Matt, and he was super nice, spent some time with me, helped me look for some classic lego kits, and then gave me a card with the information for the LEGO charity where they support projects just like mine.

 

 

Here is the Lego Vision (taken directly from their website www.lego.com)

 

LEGO's
Vision

The purpose and vision of the LEGO Group is to inspire children to explore and challenge their own creative potential.

•  We strive to accomplish this by offering a range of high quality and fun products centered around our building systems.

•  In the hands of children, the products inspire the unique form of LEGO play that is fun, creative, engaging, challenging - all at the same time.

•  This activity supports the child, giving it the special pride of accomplishment. In the process it "automatically" or playfully develops a set of future, highly-relevant capabilities: Creative and structured problem-solving, curiosity and imagination, interpersonal skills and physical motor skills - building with LEGO bricks is thus about "learning through play".

 

I found certain elements of this to be perfect metaphors for what I am trying to accomplish. LEGO lets you dream and create and actually build those little creations. It gives you directions that you can follow and earn a sense of accomplishment, but you can also take the pieces and build something totally abstract as well. There are so many great lessons for kids of all ages.

 

I am going to approach LEGO with a request for corporate partnership for the Dream Cadets, the non profit aspect of my project. It will surely prove to be interesting working with these big corporations and seeing what they have to offer, what interest I can generate and how big we can make this project.

 

Like the little penny stop motion movie that I made, LEGO offers a great lesson for me to return to as well;

 

Question: How do you complete your LEGO projects, both big and small?

Answer: One block at a time and follow your plan.

 

Until next time,

 

Jim Moss

The Panhandling Spaceman