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Health & Fitness

Incidental Learning

This article will be all about good sayings that I will connect together into an informative story.

The first one will be “tikkun  olan meaning repairing the world, healing and restoring the world with social action and community service.” The second one will be  “incidental learning can be an advantage in our life” (I made that one up) and the next one is what someone told me. He said “If I am in your top one hundred people, if I can be in your life, position does not matter, whether I am 1 or 100 on the list, and if I can be of assistance to you, that is all that matters.” His name is Dennis H. Myers and he is my physician assistant. He himself is surely in my top one hundred people I know and he is very high up on the number count.

There is another one that is useful too. It says “listen to others, but don’t lose your voice.”

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Here goes: Do what you can if possible to make an appearance and help others. It can be of manual service like taking a senior to a doctor’s appointment and waiting for them because they have no family or friends to do this. That would be tikkun olan. Try to be in the top one hundred people of someone special to you and say and do things for them that will make them happy and you too in the long run. Even speaking something nice and calming is important and could be the highlight of their day or week. Say something that will have them feel good about themselves at this time in their, maybe, lonely life. Show them you care and single out something especially dear about them and comment on that to them. It will be worth everything to them and to you, for doing or saying it.

 Years ago, I was going to write a column on dance for a dance studio newsletter. The owner said to me that I had to write a general column, not about me or others who danced, just a plain generic column. I said no, when I write I praise, encourage, inspire people who accomplish things in dancing or regular life. I cannot write a generic column about invisible people with no names, no faces and no specific achievements or realizations. I want to praise others and even myself as an example. I have written as of yesterday my 636th article for Patch and every one of them praises someone or a group of people and even me.I did not compromise my beliefs to write for him.

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 Incidental learning is when you learn something new you never had an interest in before now. It means casually you took in some information and you will use it sometime, somewhere and it will benefit you and others.

The third one, be a number in someone’s top one hundred list. Be anywhere on the list, but somewhere noticeable. I know I was number one on my Mom’s list all my life and when I became an adult, I wanted to be number one in helping her if I could especially after Dad died in 1964. She did not need me financially, she needed me emotionally and I was there for her. She made her own way, lived alone, worked at an interesting job for the State of Maryland and had a pleasant social life with her lady friends who also were widowed and she traveled some out of the country; even taking her first airplane ride when she was about sixty. I encouraged her to do this and to travel and she had fun late in life.

The last one is listening to others. People like to be listened to when they tell you something. Do not look away and act bored, uncaring and ready to leave their presence. This makes them feel inadequate and unimportant.

George Eliot, the writer said “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

Do not get on the list of what you might have been. Be on the list of what is being and that is now; you can be whatever you desire and make sure you keep on desiring it.

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