Friday, June 24th 2022

6:30 a.m. is a good time to get started. I slept really well and I seem to have woken up quite refreshed. Really, this is an extremely strange feeling. I feel good. I don’t know how long this is going to continue but I just feel good.

The weather report says it’s going to be clear today. If we get any rain, it’s going to be tomorrow. I don’t want to cheat my garden but I do not have to water today. Not that there isn’t some element of fun in watering right now. Except for leaking like a sieve, the new water pump and the ability to turn it on and off by phone is revelatory. Whereas before, it was a noisy brutal wet debacle of trying to haul 50 m of hose around and problems were painful hurried affairs, now it is a relatively quiet business where problems get solved casually and quietly. I feel like I want to practice more.

I am worried about the leaking though. It is possible that my three-quarter inch hose is the genuine culprit. The pump itself might want more volume than I’m allowing it. I could also change to a metal fitting and I probably will but still, there’s got to be something in here to make it be perfect without breaking the bank.

I’ve been thinking that maybe next year it might be worth investing in a permanent system. The trees I have are in a row and even if we plant the lower gardens in trees and berry bushes as planned, I wonder if putting in some kind of permanent watering system might be worth the effort. I’m not really talking about the vegetable boxes so much. I don’t think I’m ever going to have so much water to waste. But perhaps if I could simply turn on the pump and get 10 or 15 L of water to the base of all of my trees, we might be pretty good as far as fruit and nut harvests.

This is a long way away from my original plan which was to build a roofing structure. The trees are actually planted in a line that was planned to be next to at least one roofing panel which would increase the volume of water that gets to the trees when it does rain. I still have that guy’s number. He’s a roofing guy who agreed to do the job for a reasonable price. And of course, within a few years, the trees will be mostly self-sufficient as will the berry bushes and that was exactly the original idea.

I’m not running away from work. I understand that this is the basic concept of local mentality. Especially among the women, having movement and something to do is a joyous thing. And when I was younger, I definitely believed that being outside and having a lot to do was the best way to spend my days. The last few days have indeed been okay and it’s been nice to be able to keep moving around. Again, there’s pain now. But I was still pretty cool with how my day developed and how much I got done.

I guess I’m just looking for a sweet spot. Or maybe I’m just nostalgic for that flame of youth. I’m not a young man anymore and the energy and drive does not come so naturally. I understand that a lot of My philosophy about going easy on the world would be counterproductive to the actual human animal. When we are young and energetic, the world can be a prison when we are held back. 

On the other side though, we only harness this energy for the profitability of corporations these days. We translate human desire into gasoline powered machines and ways of siphoning money out of people’s lives unidirectionally away from the physical communities where they live. Whatever the truth is of the human animal, we are a part of a giant animal farm and we are simply being exploited just like any other animal under our care.

This is where I believe that there is relevance in making these words. I understand that I have no particular popularity. I am the most obnoxious and offensive person and I push people away as a physical reflex to almost any attention. And, if you’re stupid enough to check in with me, you end up in print and unless you’re used to it, you immediately are going to be offended. This is no way to win Friends and influence people.

But then the point of it was not to connect with my meat. The point of it was not to say that Adam’s making some noise therefore Adam wants attention. Adam didn’t want the attention, Adam wanted your attention turned towards what Adam is pointing to. Adam is asking you to stop making garbage and get out of your cars and live a bit holistically for yourself and for your community for the purpose of preservation of the planet Earth. None of this was about Adam. Such a shame that this is incomprehensible almost universally.

My friend in the Jewish community had his suggestion how I could be bigger and perhaps make money with what I’m doing. I know he was thinking well. I’m not sure he took the moment to think of exactly how many other people meant well by making the exact same suggestion. The texture of the commentary and the suggestiveness is varied. I’ve had people just screaming at me and I’ve had people delicately suggested. I’ve also had people just shake their heads and walk away. I am hopeless.

In the end though, I don’t see any difference. I don’t see any difference except that I would have less privacy and less free time and more obligations and even if there was genuine remuneration, what the hell difference would that make? I mean, if I did get flooded with money and suddenly found myself with great upward mobility, what would I do with it?

Really, this is a very serious point. I know that we are all anxious and nervous and I know that we are all extremely happy to get away from our homes and usual lives. Everyone lives for escapes and vacations and the opportunity to run as far as possible. To have international business. To have meetings abroad of great importance. Doesn’t that just make life interesting?

The thing is, the alternative is to enjoy exactly where you are. The problem with trying to find the maximum limits of your territory rather than finding love in the minutiae of your minimum requirements is exactly the ecology of the planet. If we are going to have eight or nine or 10 billion people walking around trying to make lives for themselves in the current competition or die economic system, we are dead. We cannot handle the pollution. We also cannot handle all of this money going to the corporations that demand that we continue to be as hysterical as possible. This is just a negative vigorish. It’s like playing on a roulette table with 36 zero and double zeros and only two numbers to play. The house is cut disallows anything from ever really happening sustainably.

I’ve been here a long time and one of the most common stories that I run into is that there is simply no money for a man to take care of his family so two things must happen. The first is that he must leave his family and go abroad in order to find a decent income. This is a universal truth. The second of course is that the woman also needs to find a job and as often as not and especially so if she’s attractive, this means sexual freelance. A woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do, right?

In both scenarios, you do not actually get that thing that you want. You do not actually get a family life. You don’t actually get to see your kids grow up. You do not actually get to be an influence on their lives or to spend time with them. Literally, the very bonds of family get ripped apart by this as we all get hooked up to the machines and milked for everything we are worth. Milked and discarded in the animal farm.

All I’m saying is that all of this hysterical running around and fighting for peanuts does not any Great society build. This is not a sustainable manner of living. It’s simply usage. Disposable people. And as the years go by and the systemic ability to market becomes less and less creative and more and more a bureaucratic function, as the advertising dilutes our attention and destroys our possibility of thinking for ourselves more and more, what exactly is there to this thing we call life?

As far as traveling around goes, I had my crack at that. I didn’t get it around my University days. My parents were never interested in investing in me or allowing me time to grow. It wasn’t in their vocabulary to understand such things. But a little bit later in life, with a few dollars in my hand, I use this money to go jogging around the world. I have my passport stamps. I looked at castles and shit.

This is the last thing I want to do now. The idea of traveling somewhere is just pain and work and boredom. It’s money flowing away from me that I need for more interesting things. It is encountering people with whom I will never have any meaningful relationship with. It is in fact running into people whose profession is to be there siphoning profits off of tourists.

I’ve seen what hotels charge for room space. To me, it’s ridiculous how much money needs to be spent for a bed and a shower. And it’s not even your bed and your shower. You’re on the clock. It’s worse than believing a prostitute is your love interest. Baby I love you, but you better go quick. I have another appointment.

Why would I want to put myself through this? Even if the thought of going somewhere comes into my mind, immediately I remember that I’m not a young person with a lot of freedom of movement. It isn’t at all enjoyable for me to get shuffled around. I am not looking for a tour guide to drone on and tell me about the joys and mysteries of antiquity. I don’t need to climb a pyramid because I don’t need to put myself out in the middle of a desert climbing up a few meters to see that I’m in the middle of a desert.

I also don’t need to look at the homeless problem, the amount of garbage that is created by this lifestyle, the amount of wasted fuel and unsustainable energy that gets wasted for these brief moments of nonsense. It’s dragon chasing. It’s drugs. It’s pain killing and ego gratification. It’s not sustainable and it’s not real.

What is life? Life is love. Life is food. Life is laughter. Life is swimming in clean water. Life is clean air. Life is agriculture. Sometimes life is acoustic music. Maybe life is soccer and baseball. Life is a mutual kiss and hug. Life is that moment when both of you just want to make love one more time. Life is an excellent breakfast. Life is theater. Life is serious conversation. Life is holding your naked child in your arms and your dying grandparents as well. Life is greeting your neighbors happily everyday. Life is enjoying your life just the way it is. 

***

Mic the vegan is pretty good about bringing science into things. What can you say bad about this guy? Well, he does it for money. He makes his living by making YouTube videos. There are a lot of YouTubers who turn their passion into a business. Sometimes it’s like beating a dead horse. On the other side, I learned a lot exactly from this guy about heart health and most of the scientific reasons why veganism is the way to go. In this video, it’s mostly talking about your percentage of a chance of avoiding cancer and diabetes. In this case, you really would probably rather not end up with colorectal cancer. Just saying that a plant-based diet seems to be the healthiest variant according to people who actually study such things.

Blah blah blah, I like meat. Blah blah blah it’s my personal choice. Blah blah blah I’m a drug addict and I have no control over myself and I only think about myself and I’m too stupid to be allowed to remain on this planet so cancer is here to take me away…

You can watch this video and if you can keep up with his English, I think there are subtitles and you can use a translator if it’s a problem for you, who knows, you might learn something.

Don’t worry. It’s just science.

***

Today is Friday and that means I’ve got to get my life together and all of my deals finished and packed away. I’ve got some house cleaning to do and some Garden cleaning to do. I truly, truly can live without going to the store today but I’m thinking about taking a quick bike ride over. Truthfully, I just want some white flour. I can’t think of anything else that they have except maybe for some split peas. I’m running low on split peas. I use them for a lot of things.

Also, but I’m not sure if they have it, I don’t have any parchment paper. This is baking paper. I want to get into crackers.

Bread is life. Flatbreads are nice. Simple pancakes are okay if you’re putting oil in it. You can also bake flatbreads easily enough. I don’t have a giant oven although technically, I do have a wood bread oven in this house crazily enough. But what I’m really craving is crackers.

I am a nervous eater. My snacks for the longest time have been nuts and raisins. A very healthy choice. And if you are down and your energy is low, a handful of nuts and raisins and you go back into the game. I have been in full bicycle bonk, I have been hypoglycemic and almost senseless from too much bike riding. But then I add in a couple of handfuls of nuts and raisins and suddenly another 20K was possible. The greatest human fuel in the history of the world is dried fruits and nuts. Desert food. Genuine human survival food.

But what I want is crackers. Maybe I want matzo. That would be a completely reasonable thing. That’s hysterically historic if you’re Jewish. We’ve been eating matzah as long as Jews have been Jews.

But if there is something wonderful about bread, isn’t it sometimes just a little bit nicer for that crunch? Using a cracker to pull up some dip or creamy meal? Crumbling some crackers up into soup to give it some texture? Or even just that dryness to go along with a salad?

I have been going crazy lately wanting some kind of a snack that would really satisfy. Truthfully, I’m getting a little sick of nuts and raisins. It happens. I know what they are and I know how much I can eat. I’m just jonesing out of my mind for crackers.

So if I go to the market today, not the market, the local store, I can pick up some all purpose flour and some split peas and I think I’ll be good to go. If they have parchment paper, this would be perfect.

Making crackers is not a big deal. I’ve seen two ways to do it. One is to bake a thin layer of liquid batter and the other is to roll out a solid batter and make perforations in the dough to allow it to break along specific lines.

Basic crackers 

As usual, the variations are endless.

I do have a Torah portion to get to today and once again, my good friend at the Jewish community is going to add some traditional thinking to go along with my snide secularism. We are having a really interesting argument between us. The basic issue of belief is being fought out on two fronts. For him, it is the Canon of traditional Jewish knowledge, Torah and talmud, and for me it is the science. We understand each other really well except that he cannot understand why veganism trumps everything. Thou shalt not kill seems simple enough. But despite the hypocrisy that seems incredibly black and white so to speak on the pages, today we get an optimistic perspective on the inherent good of Torah study.

So, I have a lot to do. I’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there. I guess it’s time to get moving.

***

It’s 3:30 and I’m having probably my favorite snack in the world right now. Roasted salty peanuts with dates. The sweetness of the date and the brilliant addictive taste of the roasted peanuts is just too much. Truthfully, this is a diabetics nightmare. But if you’ve hit the end of the line and need to pick me up, this will pick you up. So tasty.

Today was the third day in a row when I just wanted to move. It’s brilliant really. I feel maybe 20 years younger, like suddenly a great weight has been lifted off of me. Maybe it has. But I like it because when I’m like this, when I have this movement type energy, it seems like I finally get to things that most of the time get forgotten about or procrastinated away. These things make my things to do list but they never seem to get done. Today, I just took that list, flipped it over and shook it.

I did my laundry but just really not that big of a deal. It’s more rinsing out than anything. And while I had the well open, I went ahead and filled up the water buckets so I have enough water to cook and drink with. I swept up around the house. And then when I was sweeping, I noticed a lamp that I have been meaning to put a switch on for a long time.

Fixing that lamp suddenly made me want to reconfigure all of the electronics I have in the warm room. There is a fan and a heater and this is also where my internet is. But before I could do all that moving around, all the corners had to get cleaned out. And let me tell you, it’s been a while since anybody cleaned out those corners.

Then I started picking things up. There have been clothes lying in a pile somewhere that needed to get put away. There were messes on flat surfaces because often I’m too lazy to give a damn about them. Suddenly, I got motivated by aesthetics and just wanted things to look nice. Strange. Very strange.

I had two visitors today. Lena showed up screaming at me in the morning but by the time she got here, I had already done everything she was offering to do. She told me that she had been by looking for me on Tuesday. The woman is blind as a bat and didn’t realize that the place was locked up and I was in town. I would send her a message about blindness awareness week but I doubt she could see it. Sorry about that. Very bad joke.

I told her to come back next week on Thursday or Friday. I also took her phone number. You never know when the idea will strike to get some help.

Then a woman from the electrical department showed up and wanted to take a picture of my meter. Everything is in order and I am all paid up. She also told me that the state has decided that our contracts need new signatures and I need to go into the electrical department again. Every time I go in there, the ladies are all thrilled to see me and I become the comic relief of their day. Maybe they are lonely and need some American company.

After all that, I still had it going on so I went out and cleaned out a bit of the garden that was actually starting to look a bit like a jungle. These are my berry plants that I planted last year. I have six or seven different varieties and they are in one of the prime places I have on my land because it is right next to the roof of The Root cellar. It gets direct sun and all of that extra water. It is also an unbelievably successful place for ivy and hops. I don’t drink beer anymore but if I did, I’d be set.

I took a blanket with me and went in on my hands and knees and sitting on my bottom and hand cut away the tall grass. This Garden also has a lot of ragwort, a not particularly beautiful high rising weed but one that I like very much because it is catnip to butterflies. Butterflies just love these things so I let them grow. I’m sure she didn’t get it, I love the fact that I have a ton of butterflies that come to visit me.

I used some of this mulch that we got. It’s made of wood bark and I finished off all of the areas that I cleared with a nice circle of mulch. I admit, I like the way it looks. I like that there’s a little cleared space where the berry bush sits and I also like the wild bits around it as well. I’m not really doing this Garden for the aesthetics. I want function. I want food. But still, I can’t argue that when I was done, I liked what it looked like quite a bit. This year is not really going to be a berry year. Probably that will come next year or for sure the year after. When all of these come in and start dropping berries and making children, this particular spot on my property is going to be a lovely path to walk through.

But then suddenly I hit the wall. I was out in the brilliant sun and hand cutting and pulling weeds and fussing over the mulch and then boom. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I had a blanket out there with me so I just sort of let myself lie down on the blanket in the warm sun and I listened to the birds sing to me. What kind of got the impression that they were talking to me. I think they were asking each other if I had died. I wasn’t dead. I was just dead tired.

I picked myself up and came back inside and thought about coming into the office, exactly where I am right now, because I still have to talk about this week’s Torah reading. I even have a guest commentator on tape that I need to transcribe. Today is my last chance to get to it but at that moment, and it was about 90 minutes ago, I just didn’t have it.

I sat down on the couch in the kitchen and absolutely enjoyed being out of the Sun and this sweet cross breeze I get from the open windows and the open front door. I sat there feeling good and trying to convince myself to stand up and go to the office but my legs just would not listen to the call. They didn’t want to do anything and neither did the rest of me. I put up one or two more arguments, explaining how much time I have left and that there is still quite a bit of work to do before I can close up for the weekend. No good. It comes the time when no matter how much you try to convince yourself that you have something to do, your body just does not give a damn. I killed over, found something soft to put under my head and fell asleep again.

When I got up, I decided to go for the peanuts and dates and it worked. I am a bit rejuvenated. Hopefully rejuvenated enough to get through this next bit. It’s a good Torah portion by the way. It’s got very famous information in it.

And so without any further ado…

***

This week’s Torah portion is called Shlach (שְׁלַח) and the word basically means send out. As in specifically send out scouts or spies to take a look at your future home of Israel.

The breakdown of the reading is straightforward enough. They had come to the border of what they were told was the promised Land. Technically speaking, you can find this place on a map. It’s in Northern Israel right next to the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The land of milk and honey was fed by a large lake, the Sea of Galilee and is right near the town of Tiberius. Thanks to the Romans, you can see a Christian influence pretty much everywhere you look.

So they sent out a group of tourists or spies or surveyors or whatever you want to call them to go have a look at the territory and come back and say what was going on. They went out and found that it was the most ridiculously fertile place and literally, and this is hard to wrap your head around, carried grape bunches suspended on a pole between two men. Can you imagine the size of grapes that would have to be?

Just to cut in here, this image of Giant food stayed with me and when I wrote the screenplay for Paradise, I mentioned that the place was filled with giant fruits and vegetables. I mean, what else could Paradise be except a place where the food is so plentiful and hanging right there on the trees and bushes in front of you that there’s nothing to do but make yourself comfortable and eat?

But then for some reason everybody got paranoid and came back explaining that the place was inhabited by Giants. Maybe that’s what happens when you eat giant fruit, I don’t know, but this bad news spread like wildfire and soon, none of the children of Israel felt at all comfortable about going into this land.

Well, it seems that the Lord lost his temper big time. He was already pretty tired of the mess everybody made every time he tried to set down some laws. This time he said that he had had enough and condemned the entire generation to walk around in the desert until they died. 40 days the advance party was walking around and now 40 years everyone would be stuck in the desert. Only the children would ever see the promised Land and all the rest of them would leave their corpses lying in the sand.

After this, they collected taxes and made a barbecue and found a guy working on Sabbath and dragged him out of town and threw rocks at him till he died. More vegan stuff for me. Eating too much barbecue makes you irritable and crazy. Lots of people die from barbecue and I’m not just talking about heart attacks.

I am always pretty secular about these things. I understand that there is volume after volume of commentaries and explanations moving people away from strict pragmatic readings and into things that jibe with the religion. I’m not against doing the work or doing basically the encyclopedic reading that many serious religious people give their lives over to. I am just who I am and I live how I live. But I asked my friend to give me his point of view and more or less, this is what he had to say:

This week’s Torah portion begins with the instruction that the scouts or spies should go and explore the land. The words Viyatsuru es aretz( וְיָתֻ֨רוּ֙ אֶת־אֶ֣רֶץ) means explore the land and the root of the word viyatsuru is tsour, which is how we have the word tour as in tourism. Like many words in many languages, the Jewish language was the birthplace.

So there is a question. Moses sent the spies because he was told by God to do so. So he sent them and they came back and complained and caused problems. 

In the Talmud, dialogue is attributed to Moses in this and he said you come back and you cry but your tears are in vain. I am going to give you a reason to cry. (Transcribers note: my mother was very fond of saying this to me)

The day that this happened was on the 9th of Av (Tisha B’Av – this year August 6-7) and is now known as the saddest day of the year and is a day of fasting for observant Jews. 

This was also the day of the destruction of the first temple, it was also the destruction of the second temple and it was also the day that the Spanish Inquisition began. Not only did God and Moses say that they would give them a reason to cry, the Romans and the Catholic Church also decided to put their two cents in.

The punishment they got was one year for one day. The 40 days that they spent in Israel equated to the 40 years that they would spend in the desert. And every year on the 9th of Av, everyone would go out into the desert and lie down in their grave and wait. Some would die there and others would get up and go for another year.

So the question is if God is all-knowing, if He knows the past, present and future, this means he knew what was going to happen. And if he knew, why did he send them? If god knew this negative propaganda would cause so much death, destruction and misery, so much suffering not only in the desert but for thousands of years in the future, why start such a progression?

There is a famous story about Kabbalah scholar Reb Chaim Vital, where he sees in a dream that a student will come to him and that he should teach him the mystical aspects of the Torah. The rabbi would not live very long and even though the student was very young, he was the one who had been chosen to pass these secrets on. Reb Vital was one of these people who had memorized the entire Talmud, he was famous as a Torah scholar.

This question perplexed the boy. If God knows everything, why would he start such a progression? By custom, when there is a question too difficult to answer, you fast. And the boys stopped eating over this point. Finally, the rabbi agreed to help him and told him three different explanations as to why this happened. Still unsatisfied, the rabbi gave him another three explanations, one for each day of the week and then even a seventh explanation, the 7th being the holiest and most profound because it represented the Sabbath.

But the boy still didn’t get it. He was broken. He continued fasting until he was too weak to read. Where was the answer? Why would god send so much misery and suffering to his chosen people? 

So the Rabbi took him to the well of Miriam and gave him a drink of the water.

During their travels through the desert, the Jewish people were accompanied by a rock from which an abundant supply of water constantly flowed. It was called Miriam’s Well, because it existed in the merit of Moses’ older sister Miriam, who was a righteous woman and a prophetess in her own right.

(transcribers note: we are not talking about groundwater. This was a mobile well that followed them around. As my friend commented, “In our modern world, we have mobile phones but mobile wells have not yet been discovered. But we are waiting.”)

After drinking the water, suddenly, the answer became clear. The water is there, drink from it. Take what you need and there is always more when you need it. Even in the most difficult times, the answer as always is there to be found. That is the beauty of the Torah. It is always there to nourish you no matter the troubles that come. 

*** 

All right, it’s about 7:15 and it is time to close up the shop.

I would say that this was a good week. I could even say that it was an excellent week. This week we turn the corner on the year. We reached the top of the hill and now we start that slow descent back towards winter. As far as nature is concerned, the gong has been sounded and life becomes serious and prophetic and profound. All of last year’s plants have come back. There is a multitude of colors and reproduction and life and the quest for the last bits of sunshine are everywhere. You crossed the border. Everything gets serious now.

I haven’t heard any results from Ukraine and their quest to be included in the roster of official European countries. The wave obviously has been formed. Never has a country garnered so much sympathy. Perhaps deservedly so. Perhaps it’s just a farce started by Russian imperialism. Perhaps it was nothing but a demonstration of the cruelty possible in our world. It’s so easy to point fingers but yet historically, how many finger pointers can look in the mirror and not see themselves many times over?

For some reason this week, I burst into energy the likes of which I haven’t felt in a long time. From where this energy came, I have thought and tried to explain for myself and on these pages. All I can say is it felt like being alive again. There was much pain but nevertheless, I had to wherewithal to keep going. It was a pleasure to have so much movement. And from wherever it came, no matter whether it was a positive source or simply the removal of some cancer in my life, thank you. Thank you for being with me or thank you for please for the love of God finally getting out of my life. Funny how that works.

To be honest, when I crashed today, I stayed crashed. I managed to get to the office and I hope today’s tour study was interesting to read. It was interesting and enjoyable to do. I don’t mean to be so facetious. My usual secular readings are sometimes perhaps cruel. It is not my meaning to demean or belittle in any way. I myself have a hard time believing in the great man in the sky, but I do believe in 3000 years of reading, arguing and group meditations. You can’t argue with the physical actions that gave me whatever natural talents I have. I know who I am and where I came from. And despite my propensity for being clinical in my days and naturalist and pragmatic in my beliefs, I respectfully thank you for these gifts I have been given. My survival has depended on my wits. I hope it is understood that I came by them honestly from people who understand a thing or two about survival and carrying on despite adversity. Give respect where respect is due.

As for the weeks and months to come this year, there is of course a ton of work still to do. There are things to learn and practice. There are things I will do for the first time. Hopefully, I don’t make too many mistakes or ruin too many things. I’m pretty cheap and I don’t like paying for things twice. They say that you never know what a lesson in life is supposed to cost. But if you don’t learn the lesson the first time, you pay and pay again.

As far as any closing wisdom or philosophy, perhaps all I can say is that life is made up of moments. Of course some are good and some are bad. Some moments we have stay with us forever and we look back on them regardless of how many years passed as being wonderful memories. I remember some things from my youth that I am extremely proud of. Of course, there are more than a few failures that still inspire facepalms decades and decades later.

This is a time for nostalgia especially amongst young people. School is finished and either summer vacation or new lives are beginning as well. Saying goodbye to friends either for a few months or perhaps forever brings deep emotions. We all know that we do not keep each other as we do when we are young. The concept of the word friends changes as you get older and busier and responsibilities take over your days.

The only truth that I can offer that is universal is that we do need to treasure our memories, good and bad. There are diseases that steal people’s memories. There are injuries and illnesses that take away our capacity to physically relive things. Perhaps the greatest wisdom is to understand this. Be kind in what you do. Your actions will last forever.