Dogs In A Photo Booth. What Happened Next Will Make You Smile

Photographer Lynn Terry had an amazing artistic idea: she put two dogs in a photo booth so as to capture some amazing moments. But she could never expect how sweet the results would turn out to be…

Garcia's common decency

Michael Garcia, a waiter in Houston, Texas, refused to serve customers who acted rudely toward a 5-year-old boy with Down Syndrome. "I heard the man say, 'Special needs children need to be special somewhere else'… My personal feelings took over, and I told him, 'I'm not going to be able to serve you, Sir… How could you say that?… How could you say that about a beautiful 5-year-old angel?'" 

Garcia refused to serve the customers who threatened to leave if nobody else served them. Garcia responded, "Good!" and they left the restaurant. The restaurant has since gained many new customers for Garcia's common decency. 

Salty Coffee

He met her at someone's wedding. He requested her to have coffee with him, she was surprised but due to being polite, she promised. They sat in a nice coffee shop, he was too nervous to say anything, she felt uncomfortable, and she thought to herself, "Please, let me go home..."

Suddenly he asked the waiter, "Would you please give me some salt? I'd like to put it in my coffee." Everybody stared at him, so strange! His face turned red but still, he put the salt in his coffee and drank it. She asked him curiously, "Why you have this hobby?" He replied, "When I was a little boy, I lived near the sea, I liked playing in the sea, I could feel the taste of the sea, just like the taste of the salty coffee. Now every time I have the salty coffee, I always think of my childhood, think of my hometown, I miss my hometown so much, I miss my parents who are still living there." While saying that tears filled his eyes. She was deeply touched. That's his true feeling, from the bottom of his heart. A man who can tell out his homesickness, he must be a man who loves home, cares about home, has responsibility of home... Then she also started to speak, spoke about her faraway hometown, her childhood, her family.

That was a really nice talk, also a beautiful beginning of their story. They continued to date. She found that actually he was a man who meets all her demands; he had tolerance, was kind hearted, warm, careful. He was such a good person but she almost missed him! Thanks to his salty coffee! Then the story was just like every beautiful love story, the princess married to the prince, and then they were living the happy life... And, every time she made coffee for him, she put some salt in the coffee, as she knew that's the way he liked it.

After 40 years, he passed away, left her a letter which said, "My dearest, please forgive me, forgive my whole life's lie. This was the only lie I said to you---the salty coffee. Remember the first time we dated? I was so nervous at that time, actually I wanted some sugar, but I said salt. It was hard for me to change so I just went ahead. I never thought that could be the start of our communication! I tried to tell you the truth many times in my life, but I was too afraid to do that, as I have promised not to lie to you for anything... Now I'm dying, I afraid of nothing so I tell you the truth, I don't like the salty coffee, what a strange bad taste... But I have had the salty coffee for my whole life! Since I knew you, I never feel sorry for anything I do for you. Having you with me is my biggest happiness for my whole life. If I can live for the second time, still want to know you and have you for my whole life, even though I have to drink the salty coffee again."
Her tears made the letter totally wet. Someday, someone asked her, "What's the taste of salty coffee?" She replied, "It's sweet."
Its a lil bit unrealistic story but the moral and the message of the story is wonderful :)

Don't feed , teach them to catch

Today I visited my bank in order to deposit a cheque for a due payment to a company. The procedure was quite simple but I thought of cross checking it with the teller so as to avoid cheque bounce back. The teller being a fresh employee (I judged it from the face look and the communication approach) wasn't sure about it. She called her manager for assistance. The manager, a nice ethical young man, elaborated the details about the form filling which I understood and thanked him for. However I noticed that while the manager was explaining to me, the teller got busy in something else and didn't pay attention to her manager nor the manager asked her to listen vigilantly to understand the procedure.

Well, I completed my work in bank and ponder that the manger had taken the corrective methodology instead of preventive methodology. Hence there is a big time chance that the teller would call her manager again in future and every time the manager will have to leave his desk, come to the teller point and explain the same procedure to more customers in future which he could have avoided by teaching the procedure to the 'right person', the teller. This extra work would cause disturbance in his routine work and waste his precious time to complete the jobs he has been primarily hired for !!!

This whole situation reminded me of a good quote which says, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for the day; Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a life time" And this is why I said earlier, that the teller will ask her manager again (asking for the fish)
because the manager didn't teach to'catch the fish'

So my friend this is where the power of being visionary and pro activeness come into play… that is to see the future now and make the right moves … and this is where Stephen Covey suggests us 'to begin with the end in mind'

The Man Who Spit In Buddha’s Face

The Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples when a man came and spat in his face. 

He wiped it off, and he asked the man, “What next? What do you want to say next?” The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on somebody’s face, he will ask, “What next?” He had no such experience in his past. He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted. Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man. But Buddha was like neither, he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly. But just matter-of-factly he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on his part.

But Buddha’s disciples became angry, and they reacted. His closest disciple, Ananda, said, “This is too much. We cannot tolerate it. He has to be punished for it, otherwise everybody will start doing things like this!”

Buddha said, “You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me. He is new, a stranger. He must have heard from people something about me, that this man is an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a corrupter. And he may have formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion. He has spit on his idea of me because he does not know me at all, so how can he spit on me?

“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spit on his own mind. I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something. Spitting is a way of saying something. There are moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer. There are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you have to do something. When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something. I can understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, “What next?”

The man was even more puzzled! And Buddha said to his disciples, “I am more offended by you because you know me, and you have lived for years with me, and still you react.”

Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night. When you see a Buddha, it is difficult, impossible to sleep anymore the way you used to sleep before. Again and again he was haunted by the experience. He could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over, sweating and soaking the sheets. He had never come across such a man; the Buddha had shattered his whole mind and his whole pattern, his whole past.

The next morning he went back. He threw himself at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asked him again, “What next? This, too, is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language. When you come and touch my feet, you are saying something that cannot be said ordinarily, for which all words are too narrow; it cannot be contained in them.” Buddha said, “Look, Ananda, this man is again here, he is saying something. This man is a man of deep emotions.”

The man looked at Buddha and said, “Forgive me for what I did yesterday.”

Buddha said, “Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges goes on flowing, it is never the same Ganges again. Every man is a river. The man you spit upon is no longer here. I look just like him, but I am not the same, much has happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much. So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge against you.

“And you also are new. I can see you are not the same man who came yesterday because that man was angry and he spit, whereas you are bowing at my feet, touching my feet. How can you be the same man? You are not the same man, so let us forget about it. Those two people, the man who spit and the man on whom he spit, both are no more. Come closer. Let us talk of something else.”

Sean Swarner

Never quit, never give up and you will always succeed must surely be the words by which Sean Swarner lives. This young man has conquered problems that many people had assured him were insurmountable. Through his exhilarating, exuberance for life against all odds he has inspired millions of individuals around the world.


Sean Swarner was first diagnosed with deadly cancer when he was only 13 years old. After battling his way through this disease he was once again diagnosed with a different type of cancer at 16. Not only was this new diagnosis emotionally devastating, he was told he only had 2 weeks left to live and a priest was summoned to perform the Last Rites.


Family, friends and the medical establishment were once again amazed when Swarner triumphed over cancer for the second time. After cheating death twice while still a teenager Sean Swarner realized how truly precious life was and he was determined to live his own life to the fullest potential possible.


Sean decided that there would be nothing too high, too difficult or too impossible for him to accomplish. Then he set out to show the world the powerful strength of the human spirit.


He became the first cancer survivor to scale Mount Everest. This meant that Sean Swarner, with only partial lung capacity, was able to reach the highest point on Earth. With this heroic achievement under his belt he continued to climb mountains in South America, Antarctica, Africa, Europe and Australia.

Grateful whale

If you read the front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, Dec 15, 2005, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.


The fifty-foot whale was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her her tail, her torso and a line tugging in her mouth.


A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallone Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her - a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.


They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around - she thanked them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.


The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.


May you, and all those you love, be so blessed and fortunate in the New Year -to be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you.


And, may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude.

The mind & The Ocean

Swamiananda and his disciple Ranga were strolling on the beach by the ocean. It was a cold day and the wind was blowing strongly over the ocean, raising very high waves.
After walking for some time, Swamiananda stopped, looked at his disciple and asked: "What does the choppy ocean remind you?"


"It reminds me of my mind. Of my rushing and restless thoughts," answered Ranga.


"Yes, the stormy ocean is like the mind, and the waves are the thoughts. The mind is neutral like the water. It is neither good, nor bad. The wind is causing the waves, as desires and fears produce thoughts," said Swamiananda.


"I wouldn't want to be on a boat, in the middle of the ocean, in a storm like this," said Ranga.
"You are there all the time," responded Swamiananda and continued, "Most people are on a rudderless boat in the middle of a choppy ocean, even if they do not realize it. The mind of most people is very restless. Thoughts of all kinds come and go incessantly, agitating the mind like the ocean's waves."


"Yes," Ranga interrupted him, "You don't have to tell me. This is the reason I am with you. I want to calm down the waves of my mind."


Swamiananda looked at Ranga for a while, smiled and said: "You don't calm the ocean by holding the water and not letting it move. What is necessary is to stop the wind. The wind is made of your thoughts, desires and fears. Don't let them rule your life. Learn to control them by controlling your attention, and then the ocean of your mind becomes calm."


"And how do I do that?"


"Suppose it is possible for the ocean to disregard the wind, what would happen then?" asked Swamiananda.


"The waves would cease. But no one can stop the wind."


Swamiananda looked at him with a mysterious smile and said: "Why not? The wind, the ocean, and thoughts are all within the mind. When you can control the mind, you can control everything within it. But first you have to control your mind, which means you have to control your attention."

Whole world stinks

Wise men and philosophers throughout the ages have disagreed on many things, but many are in unanimous agreement on one point: "We become what we think about." Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A man is what he thinks about all day long." The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius put it this way: "A man's life is what his thoughts make of it." In the Bible we find: "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he."

One Sunday afternoon, a cranky grandfather was visiting his family. As he lay down to take a nap, his grandson decided to have a little fun by putting Limburger cheese on Grandfather's mustache. Soon, grandpa awoke with a snort and charged out of the bedroom saying, "This room stinks." Through the house he went, finding every room smelling the same. Desperately he made his way outside only to find that "the whole world stinks!"

So it is when we fill our minds with negativism. Everything we experience and everybody we encounter will carry the scent we hold in our mind.

Floating Soap- A inspirational story

In 1879, one company's best seller was candles. But the company was in trouble. Thomas Edison had invented the light bulb, and it looked as if candles would become obsolete. Their fears became reality when the market for candles plummeted since they were now sold only for special occasions.


The outlook appeared to be bleak for the company. However, at this time, it seemed that destiny played a dramatic part in pulling the struggling company from the clutches of bankruptcy. A forgetful employee at a small factory in Cincinnati forgot to turn off his machine when he went to lunch. The result? A frothing mass of lather filled with air bubbles. He almost threw the stuff away but instead decided to make it into soap. The soap floated. Thus, Ivory soap was born and became the mainstay of the Company.


Why was soap that floats such a hot item at that time? In Cincinnati, during that period, some people bathed in the Ohio River. Floating soap would never sink and consequently never got lost. So, Ivory soap became a best seller in Ohio and eventually across the country also.


Like the company, never give up when things go wrong or when seemingly insurmountable problems arise. Creativity put to work can change a problem and turn it into a gold mine.

Focus right

Most of us never really focus because we don't know the power of focus. We constantly feel a kind of irritating psychic chaos because we keep trying to think of too many things at once. There's always too much up there on the screen.

There was an interesting motivational talk on this subject given by former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson to his football player:

" I told them that if I laid a two-by four wooden plank across the room, everybody there would walk across it and not fall, because our focus would be that we were going to walk that two-by-four.
But if I put that same two-by-four wooden plank 10 stories high between two buildings only a few would make it, because the focus would be on falling from high & failing.
Focus is everything. The team that is more focused today is the team that will win this game."

Johnson told his team not to be distracted by the crowed, the media, or the possibility of losing, but to focus on each play of the game itself just as if it were a good practice session. The Cowboys won the game.

Moral :
It's not always fear of losing the game of life we play, it's about focusing correctly on one piece at a time to get the same right.

A simple gesture

A little boy selling magazines for school walked up to a house that people rarely visited. The house was very old and run down and the owner hardly ever came out. When he did come out he would not say hello to neighbors or passers by but simply just glare at them.

The boy knocked on the door and waited, sweating from fear of the old man. The boy's parents told him to stay away from the house, a lot of the other neighborhood children were told the same from their parents.

As he was ready to walk away, the door slowly opened. " What do you want?" the old man said. The little boy was very afraid but he had a quota to meet for school with selling the magazines.

"Uh, sir, I uh am selling these magazines and uh I was wondering if you would like to buy one." The old man just stared at the boy. The boy could see inside the old man's house and saw that he had dog figurines on the fireplace mantle.

"Do you collect dogs?" the little boy asked. "Yes, I have many collectibles in my house, they are my family here, they are all I have." The boy then felt sorry for the man, as it seemed that he was a very lonely soul. "Well, I do have a magazine here for collectors, it is perfect for you, I also have one about dogs since you like dogs so much." The old man was ready to close the door on the boy and said, "No boy, I don't need any magazines of any kind, now goodbye."

The little boy was sad that he was not going to make his quota with the sale. He was also sad for the old man being so alone in the big house that he owned. The boy went home and then had an idea. He had a little dog figure that he got some years ago from an aunt. The figurine did not mean nearly as much to him since he had a real live dog and a large family. The boy headed back down to the old man's house with the figurine. He knocked on the door again and this time the old man came right to the door. "Boy, I thought I told you no magazines."

"No, sir I know that, I wanted to bring you a gift." The boy handed him the figurine and the old man's face lit up. "It is a Golden Retriever, I have one at home, this one is for you." The old man was simply stunned; no one had ever given him such a gift and shown him so much kindness. "Boy, you have a big heart, why are you doing this?" The boy smiled at the man and said, "Because you like dogs."

From that day on the old man started coming out of the house and acknowledging people. He and the boy became friends; the boy even brought his dog to see the man weekly.