The Story of Kyle

One day, when I was a freshman in high school, I saw a kid from my class was walking home from school. His name was Kyle. It looked like he was carrying all of his books. I thought to myself, “Why would anyone bring home all his books on a Friday? He must really be a nerd.” I had quite a weekend planned (parties and a football game with my friend tomorrow afternoon), so I shrugged my shoulders and went on. As I was walking, I saw a bunch of kids running toward him. They ran at him, knocking all his books out of his arms and tripping him so he landed in the dirt. His glasses went flying, and I saw them land in the grass about ten feet from him. He looked up and I saw this terrible sadness in his eyes. My heart went out to him. So, I jogged over to him and as he crawled around looking for his glasses, and I saw a tear in his eye.
As I handed him his glasses, I said, “Those guys are jerks. They really should get lives.” He looked at me and said, “Hey thanks!” There was a big smile on his face. It was one of those smiles that showed real gratitude.

I helped him pick up his books, and asked him where he lived. As it turned out, he lived near me, so I asked him why I had never seen him before. He said he had gone to private school before now. I would have never hung out with a private school kid before.

Grammar of happiness

What is love? Shakespeare wrote that love is a star. He is one of thousands of poets and writers who have used symbols to express this deep feeling. Love is a journey. Love is a rose. Love is a fire. Love is a light. Love is a bird. Love is war. Love is a disease. Love is an addiction. Love is a game. The list of love metaphors goes on and on. Talking about abstract ideas like love is a unique human ability. This is true for almost every language in the world, but not for the language of the Pirahã people of Brazil.

The Piraha are a small tribe of about 400 people that live in the Amazon. Unlike every other human language, Piraha doesn’t have words for abstract ideas. They only talk about what they directly experience or what people they know have directly experienced. The idea that love is a star is not something that they would understand. The Piraha are not stupid, they just have a different way of experiencing the world. Daniel Everett is a professor who has been studying the Piraha for thirty years and deeply respects their culture. They have a wide knowledge of the thousands of plants and animals of the Amazon. He says, “they can walk into the jungle naked, with no tools or weapons, and walk out three days later with baskets of fruit, nuts, and small game.”

Thomas Edison and his Great Mother

One day Thomas Edison came home and gave a paper to his mother. He told her, "My teacher gave this paper to me and told me only give it to my mother."
His mother's eyes were tearful as she read the letter out loud to her child: Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn't have enough good teachers for training him. Please teach him yourself.

Many, many years after Edison's mother died and he was now one of the greatest inventors of the century, one day he was looking through old family things. Suddenly he saw a folded paper in the corner of a drawer in a desk. He took it and opened it up. On the paper was written: Your son is addled [mentally ill]. We won't let him come to school anymore.

Edison cried for hours and then he wrote in his diary: Thomas Alva Edison was an addled child that, by a hero mother, became the genius of the century.

I am a photographer

Hans Christian Andersen: The Daisy

Now listen to this! Out in the country, close by the side of the road, there stood a country house; you yourself have certainly seen many just like it. In front of it was a little flower garden, with a painted fence around it. Close by the fence, in the midst of the most beautiful green grass beside a ditch, there grew a little daisy. The sun shone just as warmly and brightly on her as on the beautiful flowers inside the garden, and so she grew every hour. Until at last one morning she was in full bloom, with shining white petals spreading like rays around the little yellow sun in the center.

The daisy didn’t think that she was a little despised flower that nobody would notice down there in the grass. No, indeed! She was a merry little daisy as she looked up at the warm sun and listened to the lark singing high in the sky.

Life

Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they were meant to be there, to serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson, or to help you figure out who you are or who you want to become.

You never know who these people may be – a roommate, a neighbor, a professor, a friend, a lover, or even a complete stranger – but when you lock eyes with them, you know at that very moment they will affect your life in some profound way.

Sometimes things happen to you that may seem horrible, painful, and unfair at first, but in reflection you find that without overcoming those obstacles you would have never realized your potential, strength, willpower, or heart.

The Tale of Two Bridges

Two old engineers were talking of their lives and boasting of their greatest projects. One of the engineers explained how he had designed one of the greatest bridges ever made.

“We built it across a river gorge,” he told his friend. “It was wide and deep. We spent two years studying the land, and choosing designs and materials. We hired the best engineers and designed the bridge, which took another five years. We contracted the largest engineering firms to build the structures, the towers, the tollbooths, and the roads that would connect the bridge to the main highways. Dozens died during the construction. Under the road level we had trains, and a special path for cyclists. That bridge represented years of my life.”

Joshua Bell

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

Wesley Autrey

One afternoon Wesley Autrey and his two young daughters, ages four and six, were standing on a subway platform in New York City. Wesley was a construction worker on the second shift. He was taking his daughters home from school before he went to work.

A young man was standing nearby. He was Cameron Peters, a 20-year-old student. Suddenly Cameron began to shake all over and fell to the ground. He had epilepsy, and he was having a seizure. Wesley knew first aid, so he ran to help Cameron. He put pen between Cameron’s teeth so he wouldn’t bite his tongue. Then he waited for Cameron to stop shaking. When the seizure was over, Cameron stood up. “Are you all right? ” Wesley asked him. “Yes, I’m fine,” Cameron answered.

Wesley was walking away when Cameron had another seizure. He fell to the ground again, but this time he fell off the subway platform and onto the tracks below. Wesley looked into the tunnel at the end of the station and saw two white lights. A train was coming. “Hold on to my daughters,” Wesley yelled to two women who were standing on the platform. Then he jumped down onto the tracks.

Positive thinking story

Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

 He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Bagan, Myanmar

All of the area was designated like fairy tales country. This feeling intensifies especially in the early morning and towards sunset when the area is wrapped in mist, fog, and the beautiful light of sunset and sunrise. The picture was taken from the top of a pagoda with a 360 degrees view of several pagodas.

The ruins of Bagan cover an area of 16 square miles. The majority of its buildings were built in the 11th century to 13th century, during the time Bagan was the capital of the First Burmese Empire. After an earthquake in 1975, there are only 2,217 pagodas left in Bagan, in contrast to more than 5,000 before the disaster.

From the 9th to 13th centuries, the city was the capital of the Kingdom of Pagan, the first kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern Myanmar. During the kingdom’s height between the 11th and 13th centuries, over 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries were constructed in the Bagan plains alone, of which the remains of over 2200 temples and pagodas still survive to the present day.

Wiki: Bagan
More about Fairy-tale Bagan read at stylishtraveltips.com 

“A perfect female” – the fascinating tale of Dr James Barry at the Cape

Early in 1817 a slim, young and newly-qualified doctor stepped onto the docks in Cape Town to take up the position of staff surgeon to the British garrison stationed there. Dr James Barry had qualified asDoctoratus in Arte Medica in July 1812 from the University ofEdinburgh, having completed the medical course there in four years and written and defended a thesis in Latin. The thesis dealt with the treatment of hernias.

From Edinburgh the young doctor went to London to become a “pupil” at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals. Here he was fortunate to study under the famous surgeons Mr (later Sir) Astley Paston Cooper and Mr Henry Cline.
Shortly after completing the two courses he followed at the hospitals he sat for the examination of the Royal College of Surgeons to qualify as a Regimental Assistant. Three days later, on 5 July 1813, Dr Barry joined the British Army as a Hospital Assistant.

The Boy & the Apple Tree

A long time ago, there was a huge apple tree. A little boy loved to come and play around it everyday. He climbed to the treetop, ate the apples, took a nap under the shadow…he loved the tree and the tree loved to play with him. Time went by…the little boy had grown up and he no longer played around the tree every day.
One day, the boy came back to the tree and he looked sad. “Come and play with me” the tree asked the boy. “I am no longer a kid, I do not play around trees any more” the boy replied.

“I want toys. I need money to buy them.” “Sorry, but I do not have money… but you can pick all my apples and sell them. So, you will have money.” The boy was so excited. He grabbed all the apples on the tree and left happily. The boy never came back after he picked the apples. The tree was sad.