Get Behind It

If I've learned anything in life, it's that everyone has a story. No matter how small or how seemingly insignificant, everyone has their own tale to tell. Unfortunately many of us go through our days worried about our own stories, not stopping to think about the stories of others and how our stories may be affecting there's. I know for a fact that I have said or done things that drastically affected others stories without my knowledge, and regrettably not all of those were good things. It's just too easy to focus inwardly sometimes.

But over the last few years I've really become painfully aware of it, it bugs me, and it's something I've vowed to change. Honestly it's one of the reasons I'm pursuing journalism, to listen to as many stories as I can. Sometimes it can be as easy as asking a friend "whatsup", you never know what answer you can get.

Take for example this short video my friend John showed me yesterday that one some awards at the first annual VIMEO awards. It's the story of a man that has to put his dog down after its long bout with cancer. The story is sad, true, but relatively mundane and regular (we've all had to do it, it sucks, etc.). But documentarian doesn't stop at the surface, he continues to ask and listen and finds out that this dog helped the man kick a nasty drug addiction and saved his friends in much of the same way. In fact this dog did what most of us can too often forget, he listened, objectively and without judgement, and as a result he saved 3 lives. Pretty simple, pretty powerful. I know that after seeing this I'm going to continue trying to open my ears and connect with as many stories as I can and I challenge you to do the same. I apologize for the preacher-esque tone of this one, but sometimes it's good to take a step back.

If you're unaffected by this short vid, you're officially an emotional cyborg. B EZ ladies and gents.