There’s this project that’s been going on for some time now, and it’s become quite famous: Humans of New York, which consists of using photos and captions to show the human side of the residents of a city that comes off as isolating and individualist. Recently, they worked with Mott Hall Bridges Academy to raise money to send kids to college, and it was amazing. They were even invited to The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and went to the white how to meet the president. With the latter, he used the occasion to ask the president himself some questions, and uploaded them about a week ago to his Facebook page.
There was one that really got to me: “When is the time you felt most broken?”, and I was surprised when it didn’t get as much attention as I thought it would and that it should have, because his answer was simply inspiring: “I first ran for Congress in 1999, and I got beat. I just got whooped. I had been in the state legislature for a long time, I was in the minority party, I wasn’t getting a lot done, and I was away from my family and putting a lot of strain on Michelle. Then for me to run and lose that bad, I was thinking maybe this isn’t what I was cut out to do. I was forty years old, and I’d invested a lot of time and effort into something that didn’t seem to be working. But the thing that got me through that moment, and any other time that I’ve felt stuck, is to remind myself that it’s about the work. Because if you’re worrying about yourself—if you’re thinking: ‘Am I succeeding? Am I in the right position? Am I being appreciated?’ — then you’re going to end up feeling frustrated and stuck. But if you can keep it about the work, you’ll always have a path. There’s always something to be done.”
I feel that we forget this too often, we become so involved with ourselves that we don’t remember that there’s so much more, and that all of that is probably much more important. I loved this so much, and I wanted to share it because, well, I think we need to keep it in mind.
Unwind The Chaos 