Luminous Beings Are We

What would you do if a friend needed your help -- like moving a big piece of furniture from one side of the room to another?

What if they asked you to take care of their pet while they were out of town?

What about if a stranger asked you for directions to a place in your city?

Now, what if a stranger asked you to take a pill that might save them, but may hurt you?

Twenty thousand women did just that in a new breast cancer study to determine which drug was best in preventing the dreaded illness. The study looked at raloxifene and tamoxifen -- two drugs known for helping to prevent breast cancer, but with some very dangerous side effects -- for example, uterine cancer.

To find out which was best, 20,000 healthy women, but with increased risk for breast cancer, had to volunteer to take one of the drugs for the test. Remember, these are healthy women -- no breast cancer or other health ailments -- who are being asked to take a drug that could possibly end up giving them a dangerous illness.

If you want to know the results of the study, follow this link.

However, I want to point out how courageous these women were for volunteering for this. Most of the women cited a family member as reasons for joining the study. Others were professionals in the medical field who see what happens to cancer patients and feel this is just the least they can do.

In a world full of selfishness and rudeness, it is more than refreshing to find people who give of themselves for the greater good of others. Emergency responders do this on a daily basis, but it is the everyday person who rises to the call that makes that person special.

The agony of cancer is profound. The search for a cure cannot be far off. We are too great of a society not to be on the edge of medical advancements that will create a new Golden Age in our world.

Take a minute to think about how you are affecting people around you. Are you making the world at large a better place? Are you making your immediate surroundings easier for others to live in?

One woman in the study said, ""How often does just your average person get to do something that truly matters? No one may remember that I did this. But I'll remember."

What will be your legacy? What will you remember?

"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

Storm Clouds Approaching

Have you ever had one of those days when you can't keep a coherent thought in your head?

I've been having a couple weeks of those. Every time I think of something to write about, I've completely forgotten it by the time I get to a keyboard. It probably means that it really wasn't worth writing about in the first place, but there is a level of frustration that is building.

And the harder I try to concentrate on what I want to remember, the faster it slips through my mental fingers. It isn't that I can't concentrate on the task at hand, just those items I think of on the drive into work/home from work/to the ice rink.

A co-worker told me she thought I was very organized and together. She was being kind.

I have reached the point where I can remember quite a few things that require analysis. I am getting bad with things that are just memory things -- like my home phone number.

I figure if I can look it up, I shouldn't have to remember it. I just have to remember where to look it up.

Before you mock me with "getting old" comments, Albert Einstein once said he didn't remember his phone number because he could look it up and he wanted to save his brain for more important stuff -- like the Theory of Relativity.

I'm saving my brain space for the lifetime batting average of Cal Ripken Jr. (.276) or the conversions of teaspoons to tablespoons (3 to 1). Not quite the heady stuff of Einstein, but I bet my Jalapeno and Apple Glazed Scallops are better than his.

Eventually, the snowflakes of my thoughts will settle down and the storm whirling in my head will cease. But until then, beware of lightning flashes of inspiration and thunder rumbles of discontent.

"To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces."