Life in the Slow Lane

Cyclone Nargis. Remember that? R___ does. He's writing from Myanmar, sharing about how the cyclone destroyed fresh water reserves and now disease is rampant. His one joy in the four pages of email is of a woman who let him know that she receives hope and comfort from hearing "sweaty Christian songs". He probably meant sweet, but then again, everything in Myanmar is sweaty. C___ just needs adult diapers so she can wheel herself around her village with no fear of shame. The chances she'll get them? With embargoes and poverty? Slim to none. And K___ over in India can't "pasteurize the thought" of people dying without a savior. I can't make sense of that, but there's a lot I can't make sense of. A nation visitors have called "hell -- on a good day" shakes violently, a marriage of 30 years flickers and dies. A grown son commits suicide. 7.0 on the Richter scale. In thousands of places, millions of lives. There are no easy answers.

In typical slowlane tradition, I will now provide resolutions for everyone else to keep. (Because frankly, the likelihood of everyone else keeping them is just as high as the likelihood of me keeping them.) 1) Go walking in the rain. 2) Discover a new use for singleton socks. 3) Learn to write legibly with your non-dominant hand (Okay, some of you can take on learning to write legibly with your dominant hand). 4) Clean your oven. 5) Encourage a child to jump. 6) Rid your possessions of one outdated piece of technology and/or the manual to operate it. 7) Conduct rigorous tests to see if you (or someone you love) is truly a princess at heart. These tests should include, but are not limited to, "The pea under the mattress" test and whether or not you can find a pair of glass slippers that fit. 8) Make your random acts of kindness less random. 9) Tell somebody you love them in six languages (not including the five love-languages). 10) Create a Facebook quiz/questionnaire popular