Hope Along The Highway

By G. E. Shuman

It has been my experience, as I have traveled along the fifty four year long road that has been my life so far, that to compare life to a highway is a pretty accurate analogy. It is, because you seem to go along smoothly for a while, sometimes for quite a while, and then there is a bump. The bump may be a small one, and hardly noticeable at all. Or it may be a huge one that rattles you to the core. Then you may have a period of smooth driving again… but, eventually, there is always another bump. There are ups and downs, hills and valleys, curves and decision-demanding intersections. It is true in life, as on the road, that you really never know what’s around the next corner. Sometimes it feels like you have just driven right smack into the middle of a very bumpy road, indeed. I will admit that the past few weeks have felt like that road, for me and for my family.

The good thing about bumpy roads, and bumpy times in our lives, is that once in a while something simply causes us to stop. On the road it may be a bump or pot hole too big to maneuver around. More likely it is a stop sign. In any case, once your car has ceased its attempts at traversing whatever conditions it is encountering, all the shaking and shivering, the rattles and tension just stop. So it is with life. Sometimes, most noticeably at troubled rocky times in life, it is good to simply stop. It is beneficial to cease your attempts at traversing whatever conditions you are encountering, at least for a time. When you do, all the shaking and shivering, the rattles and tension stop. On the road of life, the opportunity to stop is usually not caused by a stop sign. It is more likely caused by the actions of another. In my case, this action was something done by my wonderful grandson, eleven year old Devon.

I stopped, and stopped worrying and shaking and rattling one day last week, after receiving a note from my daughter Cathy, Devon’s mom. The note was just a comment or two from Cathy, telling how proud she was of Devon because of something he had done at school. It seems that a boy in Devon’s class was experiencing some problem with the school lunch lady, or the hot lunch program, or some other adult-invented school rule which punished (as usual) not the adults who were responsible, but the child who was affected. In any case, for whatever reason, the school would not give the child his hot lunches. The result; the boy had nothing to eat for lunch. The part of the story that made me stop in my tracks and think about what was really important was this. Without ever telling his mom or dad, my grandson made a decision which showed more maturity than what was being shown by the adults running his school. Devon simply began sharing his bagged lunch with the other boy, every day.

Now, you may think this is a small thing. I do not. You see, Devon’s acts were those of kindness, not of selfishness. They were acts of simple charity, not of greed. And they were not done for praise or thanks. Devon told no one, not even his parents, about what he was doing. My grandson simply wanted to help another, and took action to do so. To me, this is a very big thing indeed.

We live in a time not only of most children acting like children, living self centered lives, never being satisfied with what they have. Our time is one in which adults are doing the same. We spend, and charge, and fill up storage sheds with our toys, because we are never satisfied with what we have. We mortgage houses, cars, boats and cycles in efforts to find happiness. And those efforts are failing, miserably. At the time of this writing, our government is spending over seven hundred billion of our children and grandchildren’s dollars, to literally bail out our economic ship before it sinks. All because of over borrowing, and greedy banking practices that made such over borrowing possible.

To further mix my metaphors, and botch my analogies, there does seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel, a bit of smooth sailing ahead, and hope along the highway. You see, there are children like my grandson Devon, who are in the process of growing up, right now. They are people who selflessly share what they have, who think of others first, and more than just think… do what they need to do, without being asked. These are the people who will someday do more than bail our country out because of its past, collective, selfish sins. You know, our politicians all seem to talk of ’change’, right up until they day they are elected. But people like Devon are the ones who will actually change our world for the better. Maybe, one shared lunch at a time. I’m very proud of you Devon.

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