Nowadays, I notice that people tend to ‘see’ only those who are close to them – family, friends, relatives, colleagues. They will not notice, or even care much, about strangers. We see that everywhere we go – aunties fighting with other strangers during sales, people fighting over a car park in a crowded shopping complex, driver A not allowing driver B to cut in even though B has put signal light on, people walloping all the food in a buffet lunch and leaving nothing behind for others, etc. In most of the cases, people will think like “who cares what this fella thinks? I don’t even know him!”

Well, things might be different, if this “fella” is your friend. You will be more courteous…A LOT MORE courteous. Because you don’t want this “fella” to go around telling other friends how ruthless and rude you are. Am I wrong?

Selflessness. I think everything falls down to this particular word. Where has our sense of selflessness gone? Selflessness to not only our friends, family and people we know…but to strangers, our fellow human beings, people we meet on the road, people we meet in the train, and people we bump into inside the lift.

Perhaps the next time we meet with a stranger (except those who looks like conmen), we should try not to be so hostile? Try not to think of the person as a selfish idiot and treat him/her with respect. A very simple thing can be when you are in a lift, you can always be the last person to go out….and keep the lift door opened. Or, on the road, when a driver is desperately trying to cut into your lane to exit or whatever (with signal light on), there’s no harm to let him pass. Because to be honest, I don’t see how we can lose out on something by behaving so. Simple courtesy, no? And all these are part of being selfless too. Leave food for those who have yet to arrive….or take the amount of food that we can finish, etc. Simple stuff like these can matter a lot to others.

Try doing few of these things, and you’ll feel that …it’s actually not that difficult and your temper will actually be better. Because, at the end of the day, you will start asking yourself “what is there to lose if I let him pass?” ….and the answer is most likely be “nothing”.

Let’s try to make this world a better place, shall we? A world where everyone can practice selflessness.

There are a lot of people who wish they can make the world a better place. But let’s be honest, it’s not easy (to some, it’s impossible) for one person to do that. That’s why most people would give up without doing anything. When a goal is too difficult to achieve, one will stuck at one place and do nothing. It’s just too impossible to achieve it, so why bother?

Perhaps that’s the reason why most people are not willing to recycle their old items, stop eating shark fins, stop open burning, stop using plastic bags, etc. After all, people will always think “what can a person like me do? Even if I do change, it’s not going to help much”. Or the famous line …. “well, everyone is doing that, so why bother to be different?”

Because of such mentality, our world is becoming a worse place to stay than it was 10 years ago. And it will start getting worse for our future generations if we were to stick to that mentality. And in case you’re thinking “it’s too late”, I can tell you “better late than never”.

If you’re thinking that you won’t be able to make a difference, then I can tell you “you’re wrong”. Every action, no matter big or small, does matter. Here’s a story I’ve read from Zenhabits. It’s pretty inspiring.

One day a man was walking his dog along the beach after a storm. The tide had washed thousands of starfish onto the beach. They were still alive, but only just. A woman was making her way along the shore, throwing starfish into the sea, one by one.

“Hey, ” the man called out. “there are thousands of starfish on the beach. You’re not going to make a blind bit of difference!”

The woman stooped, picked up a starfish and threw it back into the sea. Then she smiled at the man and said, “Made a difference to that one!”

Yes, no matter whether your action involves just one person, one charity or one simple act…. it does matter. Heck, even picking up a rubbish on the floor inside your office matters! It’s that simple.

So stop thinking that whatever small things you do, don’t matter because they do!

And when more people think this way (that every action of theirs does matter), collectively, we can do wonders that will help make this world a better place.

I’m writing this post in the hope that I can change your thinking. Perhaps out of 100 people who read this post, only 1 of you will change…. but to me, it’s good enough. It’s a small percentage, but it does matter.

p/s…. i should be in Sydney by now. I’ll only be back this coming Saturday. So..i might not be able to reply some of the comments posted. Really sorry for that.

Everything is faster nowadays. People are walking faster, cars are going faster, babies are learning faster, startup companies are  closing faster, and companies are burning money faster. Heck, people even came out with stupid competitions such as “who can finish 100 hot dogs in the shortest time” just to see who is faster.

But does becoming faster actually help? Well, it depends on what you are talking about. But for the purpose of this post, let’s talk about life in general.

In my opinion, people should not move fast in life. Here are some of the reasons why.

By moving fast, you won’t be able to enjoy the process of doing something. For example, going for a vacation with your loved ones. Following a tour group has a very different feeling than free & easy (provided you know the way). By following a tour group, you will most likely be rushing against time and not enjoying the moment.

Besides that, going fast will also make you feel tired faster. It’ll drain your energy and your motivation. This happens to a lot of people. Have you ever seen people getting all fired up to do something at this moment, only to give up not long after that? It’s not that this person is not hardworking or motivated. He is! But the problem is, he is so motivated that he burns himself out before long….and he ends up giving up too early before he even manages to create the necessary momentum.

Also, going faster will bring out the worst of human beings – more errors. A project manager who rushes his team members to complete a project ahead of time might end up with a project filled with problems. A student who attends exam cram session might end up remembering nothing during exam. And parents who force their children to study this and that, hoping that their children will gain all the knowledge and become successful in a short time…but they might end up disappointed when their children become too exhausted and lose any interest in learning new stuff.

There you go. The 3 simple paragraphs consist of common scenarios that most of us have experienced or witnessed before. And based on our past experiences, we should know better than moving fast often ruin things. Yet, we continue to do so…pushing and making things faster whenever possible and end up disappointed with the outcome.

Perhaps a change is needed here. Stop pushing everything to be faster. Some things are supposed to be slow. Enjoy the moment, do it with a focused mind, do it properly and create a good outcome.

p/s….. there are things which should be fast….like the renewal of passport, bank operations, etc. But we should not mix up these things with the things that are meant to be slow. Always remember making everything fast often ruin things.

Pelf, a friend I met in the blogosphere recently contacted me to help promote this new campaign called “Turtle Blogathon”. She’s an environmentalist by the way. To be honest with you, I’m not really into such campaigns or anything that has something to do with promoting other stuff. However, this is different, because it’s about helping the environment and if it’s anything to do with helping the environment, I wouldn’t mind at all.

Anyway, here’s part of the content extracted from the web site.

WHAT IS A TURTLE BLOGATHON?
A Turtle Blogathon is an event where we blog non-stop for 24 hours, about matters relating to marine and freshwater turtles. We will be staying up all night, researching, writing and publishing one blog post every hour, even when you’re asleep. And for staying up all night, we collect donations.

The name “Turtle Blogathon” is adapted from the original Blogathon where bloggers update their websites every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight to raise funds for their chosen charity.

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
The main objectives of staying awake all night and doing the Turtle Blogathon are:

• to raise funds for the Turtle Conservation Centre (TCC) because we are a new turtle conservation organization and we are starting from zero in terms of funding. What we do have is experience, lots of experience
• to disseminate information about marine and freshwater turtles because we realize that the general public doesn’t know much about the turtles, despite these creatures being on earth since many years ago. Did you know that the earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes?
• to spread awareness about the plight of these turtles, because they are fast becoming extinct. And if we do not do anything today, our future generations will not know what turtles are!

So there you go, some basic information you need to know about this.

And yes, you can play a part in this too. Simply help to spread the words around or go to their web site HERE and have a read..

Hope it helps.

Some of us are just impatient people. We can’t wait for others to finish their sentence, we can’t wait for the food to arrive, we can’t wait for our partners to buy their stuff and some of us cannot even wait for the red light to turn green!

Just the other day, I saw this school van at around 6.40am. The van was driving quite fast from behind. I’ve already stopped my car since it was red light. The driver of the van then made a very stupid decision to overtake all the cars at the traffic light – aka, he jumped queue. He stopped right in front of the first car. 5 seconds later, he charged and it was still red light. Oh, and he was carrying a van full of school children.

He was fortunate there wasn’t any car from the other side (the other side is blocked by the tunnel, so it’s pretty hard to say whether there’s an incoming car or not). And he was very fortunate that I didn’t see his number plate.

The same kind of incident happened in Johor last time. The only difference is that the Johor driver wasn’t so lucky. His van was crushed by an incoming timber truck. If not wrong, all the kids died. It was a very sad incident. All these were caused by a single impatient person.

If someone wants to be impatient, feel free to do it without bringing harm to other people. But I think the main question here should be, why must you be so impatient? Learn to take things slowly and move at a slower pace (not telling you to drive 40 km/h on the fast lane though). Remember that impatience kills.