We lost a remarkable Australian

What makes people what they are? Some people rise to challenges and do great things. Others do wonderful things without the initial challenge and some end up in a life of crime, or just struggling to get along. Is it our upbringing? The country we live in? The experiences we have? Or maybe just in our nature.

 

A few weeks ago, Dame Elizabeth Murdoch died at age 103. She truly was a remarkable Australian. I think she was probably our biggest philanthropist, but she alway said that anyone could give money, you have to do something too. She mentions this in the video below.

 

 

Dame Elizabeth was born into a privilaged family, went to a private boarding school and in 1928 married quite young to a much older man. This man was Sir Keith Murdoch a successful businessman. Unfortunately, he died in 1952.

 

Dame Elizabeth had already started her life of philanthropy before she got married. In fact, in the video above she says that it was at age 16 that she went to a children's hospital and was so upset by it, she felt she had to do something. Click here for more information.

 

She could have given up and mourned her husband for the rest of her life, but instead, she devoted herself to the service of others. Every video clip I have seen of her she is always smiling and laughing.

 

Maybe she had a very long and successful life because she was always happy and positive and she was serving others, not always receiving from others.

 

I read once that there are three things that people need to live a happy life. The first is to have something or someone to care for, the second is to have something to look forward to and I can't remember the third. Please let me know if you know what the third one is.

 

Back to us - do you have someone or something to care for? Do you have something to look forward to? Do you help others? Do you look on the bright side of things? I am looking forward to receiving your thoughts.





The Human Spirit

As we all watched horrified at Hurricane Sandy's path up the east coast of the USA I started thinking of other recent disasters and the effect that they have on us, even if we're not there.

At the beginning of last year (2011) I remember watching the news and seeing that there were huge floods in Queensland. Thousands of properties and tens of thousands of people  were affected. After a couple of days people just started turning up to other people's streets and houses with brooms, rakes and anything else that they judged would be useful. I was amazed and very happy to see that they all pitched in to help before anything formal was organised and whether or not they knew the people.

Just days after that there were horrendous bush fires in the Perth hills and many houses were lost. The fires were accidentally lit (and the poor man who did it will probably never forgive himself) and very savage. Again, lots of property was lost, as were several lives, I think. People banded together and helped each other, whether they knew each other or not.

Shortly after that, there was a massive cyclone in Queensland. Just as it was recently in the USA, the cyclone met up with a couple of other big tropical storms and caused devestation again. (I could be getting the order of all these things mixed up.)

I was all disastered-out. I felt overwhelmed by it all, even though none of them were anywhere near where I live. I stopped watching the news, because I couldn't stand seeing more disasters and more people who had lost houses, loved ones, etc. The only good thing that seemed to happen was that people helped each other.

I stopped watching the news for about two weeks and one Friday night thought I'd watch as those disasters should have been under control and maybe the news shows would have stopped reporting on them. Unfortunately, it was the day of the Japanese tsunami - another huge disaster. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe seeing the water swamping everything in its path and destroying everything as it went by. Then after a few days there were reports of people helping each other, which raised my spirits a bit.

It seems to me that even though we see all sorts of horrible things that we do to each other - murders, robberies, etc - in the end most people are good. I don't think anyone sets out to be either good or bad, it's just what we are and in times of need we help each other. To me it was one good thing to come out of all those disasters - people helping each other.

Imagine, then, my horror of hearing the story of a mother with two young sons in the USA in the hurricane, holding on to the roots of a tree and then knocking on the door of a house and being refused entry. The two sons were killed. I saw an interview with the man who supposedly refused them entry to his house, and he, of course, denied it. I hope that it didn't happen because that would mean that my theory about everyone being basically good would not be true.