Make a Difference

We had Halloween yesterday, and today is November 1. The days, it seems, just seem to be hurtling by, and with them go the last vestiges of summer warmth and color. The leaves are coming down in torrents and the out-of-doors is becoming more drab and gray. It’s time to earnestly plan for long winter nights, indoor activities, and the cold that bites.
It’s also time to remember that there will be some for whom the long winter nights are exercises in survival; that there will be no indoor activities except what can be accomplished inside a cardboard box or dumpster, and that the cold does more than bite. I am becoming more and more convinced that there is something to this “politically conservative-socially liberal” philosophy that we are hearing more and more about as the months and years go by. I don’t know if I can classify myself in that “box”, or if I want to classify myself as anything. And that is not the topic of this blog. It is, however, a sort of paradox to see such opposite terms said about one individual and tends to mess up our neat labels we put on folks.
I would ask, though, regardless of any labeling or self-assessments that may be yours politically or socially, that you consider this year how you might be able to make a difference somehow, somewhere, in some way. You won’t be able to fix the world. You may not be able to do much more than donate a coat or a few dollars to the homeless shelter. But you can, if you yourself can look forward to a roof, warm room, and clean food and toilet facilities, make someone’s struggle to survive this winter a little easier.