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THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR BODY...MUST READ

My mother used to ask me what is the most important part of the body.Through the years I would take a guess at the correct answer. When I was younger, Ithought sound was very important to us as humans, so I said, My ears, Mommy.She said, No. Many people are deaf yet they manage. I will ask you again soon. Several years passed before she asked me again. So this time I told her, Mommy,sight is very important to everybody, so it must be our eyes. She looked at me and told me, Incorrect. There are many people in World who areblind.

Stumped again, I continued my quest for knowledge and over the years, Mother askedme a couple more times and always her answer was, No. I shall wait for right answer ,my child.

Then one year, my grandfather died. Everybody was hurt. Everybody was crying. Even

my father cried. I remember that especially because I seldom saw him cry.My Mom looked at me when it was our turn to say our final good-bye to my Grandfather.She asked me, Do you know the most important body part yet, my dear? . She saw the confusion on my face and told me, This question is very important. Itshows that you have really lived in your life. For every body part you gave me in thepast, I have told you were wrong and I have given you an example why.

But today is the day you need to get the answer. She looked down at me . I saw her eyes well up with tears. She said, My dear, themost important body part is your shoulder. I asked, Is it because it holds up my head? She replied, No, it is because it can hold the head of a friend or a loved one when they

cry. Everybody needs a shoulder to cry on sometime in life, my dear. I only hope thatyou have enough love and friends that you will always have a shoulder to cry on whenyou need it.

It is made for others and not for yourself. It is sympathetic to the pain of others.People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did . But people willNEVER forget how you made them feel.Good friends are like stars. You dont always see them, but you always know they arethere to lend their shoulder.

Two little children in Calcutta, India, a teeming city of millions, most of them poor. Urchins, they would

have been called in a Dickens novel. The boy maybe eight, the girl 12 or so. They might have been

brother and sister. I don't know.

They tugged at my jacket as I walked down a packed street. "Sir, sir, spare some money?" the girl asked.

I tried to move on. Because of the crushing poverty, begging was practically an industry in Calcutta. It

was 1988. I was 24, a struggling artist just out of Brooklyn's Pratt Institute. Like generations of young

people before me, I traveled to India in search of something vaguely spiritual. I just wasn't sure what.

The kids persisted. The boy thrust up his fingers. "Please, sir," he said. His fingers were mangled stubs.

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The girl held her hands up too. They were the same. I wasn't shocked. This was standard begging

strategy, and I couldn't give what I didn't have.

"We're lepers," the girl cried. I didn't know whether to believe them. I quickened my step. So did they.

What did they want from me? I was just a scraggly young American with a backpack. There were many

more prosperous-looking tourists all around. "Come and see where we go for lunch," the boy said,

keeping up.

I thought about how I must look to them. A fairly clean pair of jeans and a backpack must've seemed so

affluent. "Okay," I said, not sure why. Maybe my conscience had something to do with it. How could I turn

them away?

They led me down a back street to a drab stucco building. The girl reached up and pulled on a bell. The

door opened. A nun appeared. "Welcome," she said. From within I heard voiceschildren's voices. I was

led into a room lined with about 20 cots. "This is our orphanage," said a nun. "Some, like these two, just

eat here." Maybe it was the look on my face that said I was losing my heart to these kids. "Let me take

you to meet the sister who runs our place," the nun said.

She showed me to an unadorned room off the main quarters. It was empty, save for a plain wooden table,

two chairs, a bare lightbulb hanging over the table and a curtain for a door. One of the walls was inscribed

with aprayerby St. Francis. A moment passed. I studied the prayer. There was nothing else to do. A nun

wearing a white head shawl bordered in blue finally stepped through the curtain. She was short and

energetic with a remarkable aura about her. "I'm Mother Teresa," she said.

I'd never heard of her. But I could see she was smart and charismatic. She drew me right in. I'd come to

India to travel and soak up its culture until my money ran out. So I was shocked to hear myself say,

"Could I stay here and help you?"

Mother Teresa looked at me appraisingly, then spoke. "Are you a doctor?" she asked, almost sharply. "A

nurse? A psychologist? Do you have any medical training?"

"No," I said.

"Then how can you help us?"

How could I argue with this tiny nun? All I had to offer was my middle-class American sympathy. What

they needed were doctors and medicine and therapy, not pity. I'm sure I looked crestfallen. Mother

Teresa spoke in a soft tone. "We can use you in Kali temple," she said. It was a home for the dying, she

explained, that she'd established in a Hindu temple in a poor district of Calcutta. "The only skills you need

there are gentleness and patience." I stayed in the old temple for about a month, caring for those in the

last days of life. I washed and fed them, and sat and talked with those who could speak.

"I used to be a schoolteacher," said one. "I was a government worker," said another. They spoke with

honesty and with poignancymostly about how they had entered adulthood hoping to better their lives

and the lives of their families. "But I had so little money," said the schoolteacher. "The lack of opportunity

just beats you down," the government worker said. Remorse and sadness seemed to shroud them. Each

day some would die and others would walk through the door and take their place. Each day I would ask

myself,Is this what I sought when I came to India?

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At night I retreated to my room. With my money dwindling, without knowing anyone, there was little to do

but sit and think. Here I was just starting out and I was spending my time with people at the end of their

lives. The work was hard, but it spoke to me. One thing I knew: When I returned to the comforts of home,

India would never be far from my mind.

Broke, I headed back to the States and settled into an artist's loft in Jersey City, doing sculpture and

helping other, better-known artists with their large installations. Nights, though, it wasn't just my art I was

thinking about. The images of the kids, of those dying people, of Mother Teresa, played in my head. Art is

meant to be inspiring. But I didn't see how my talent would better the life of any of those I'd left behind in

India. If I would've thought toprayI would have pleaded for guidance.

I didn't need to. One day I was rummaging through an abandoned storage space on the floor beneath my

studio loft. I was searching for odds and ends I might use for a sculpture I was working on a series of

wooden panels with everyday objects. I spotted an old frame buried in a pile of junk. I yanked it out. It was

a paintinga portrait. I recognized the man in the picture: Ossie Clark, a well-known designer from the

1960s. But more important, I recognized the style of the artist and the signature in the bottom right-hand

corner: DH. It was a long-lost work by David Hockney, one of the most important artists of the latter half of

the 20th century!

I took it to Sotheby's, the famous art auction house. The appraiser offered me $18,000, more money than

I'd ever had at one time. Friends asked what I was going to do with it. Move to a bigger studio? Be free to

create more art? The odd thing was, I knew instantly. I packed a bag and flew to see Mother Teresa.

Again I stood in the orphanage, in that same barren room. She walked through the curtain exuding that

same energetic strength.

"Mother Teresa," I said, "I've come back." I explained the circumstances of my return.

She studied me carefully. "So many young people like you cluster in the cities. You should go to a rural

area, where there are so few volunteers and so much need. The Lord will show you."

The train took 10-and-a-half hours to get to Orissa, the poorest state in India. I stopped at a destitute

village named Juanga. I sat under a shade tree where villagers gathered and, with the help of an

interpreter, asked what they needed. "Doctors," said one. "Medicine," said another. "People die because

there are no pharmacies."

There, under the tree, the answer came to me, as if this Lord Mother Teresa spoke about had whispered

in my ear: Build them a hospital. And staff it.

It took three years, all of my seed money plus a ton of fundraising and the sweat of a lot of locals, but in

1996 we opened a 30-bed hospital with round-the-clock physician care. The day we opened, everyone in

Juanga and the surrounding villages came. Some had stitched a huge net of lotus flowers and jasmine,and draped it over the building. That first month, we treated more than a thousand people, many who had

never been to a doctor. "You don't know how much this means," a farmer, whose wife had been

bedridden for months for want of penicillin, said.

I returned home and established Citta (Sanskrit for "compassionate mind"), a charitable organization that

provides assistance to destitute communities around the world. We've opened hospitals, schools,

women's centers and orphanages in rural India, Nepal and Mexico. Today, I spend much time traveling

between them and back to the States.

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I started out an artist. I still am in a sense. Like great art, helping others inspires. It empowers both the

giver and the receiver and appeals to a deep human beauty. Compassion, I learned from Mother Teresa,

illuminates the soul. It may be the greatest art of all.

Ang mga LALAKI.

Hindi lahat babaero.

Hindi lahat paasa.

Hindi lahat pa-fall.

Hindi lahat mang-iiwan.

Hindi lahat malandi.

Hindi lahat ay hindi nagseseryoso.

Hindi lahat makitid ang utak.

HINDI LAHAT NANG LALAKE KATULAD NANG NANAKIT SAYO.

Meron paring mga lalake na marunong nagmamahal nang totoo. May mga lalaki pa din na worth it

mahalin nang sobra-sobra.Mga lalakeng worth it sa pag mamahal mo. Meron dyang tamang lalaki para sayo.

Lesson: Hindi porket sinaktan ka ng past mo e sasaktan ka rin ng darating sayo. Walang mgkaparehong

love story.