What’s having a Life Anyway?

By Marita Greenidge

If you don’t go to bars or parties on the weekend guess what, you don’t have a life! At least that’s what television teaches you. Essentially having a life boils down to the presence of certain activities in your life – drinking alcohol and partying.

I too got trapped in this, joking with friends that I “didn’t have a life” when I stopped bar hopping and partying.

But hey what’s having a life anyway? To me having a life is doing the activities you love. I realized that heading out to party on the weekends wasn’t really that exciting anymore. Actually halfway through the night I’d be drained and bored (how’s that for proof of getting old?...lol) Well it wasn’t that I couldn’t keep up; it’s really that things that don’t excite me drain the life out of me.

I’d rather be having a quiet dinner with a few close friends or reading/watching something about marketing. Instead of going to loud beach parties, I’d rather spend quiet days at the beach listening to waves and reading a magazine/book. Instead of going to bed at 6 am after a crazy night on the town, I’d rather be getting up at 6 am to head to a hike.

Your definition of life is whatever you make it. It’s whatever you do that makes your existence rich. If hiking, photography, dancing, singing, playing a sport, reading, spending time with your family etcetera are the things that excite you most, if they are present in your life, then you most certainly have a life.

It’s Friendship Day People…so who are your friends again?

By Marita Greenidge

Can you do it? Can you really walk hand-in-hand with someone who’s not going where you want to go? At some point along the journey someone’s going to have to let go or both your journeys will come to a screeching halt.

Pretty simple concept…let’s make it even simpler. You are kind enough to give your friend a ride to the supermarket. You buy all your groceries and are ready to head back home. If both of you live at the same house then great, you return home together. If you don’t, you have to drop that friend off. If you decide you want to hang out with your friend a little more because you enjoy their company so much then you’re stuck at that friend’s house until you leave. Meanwhile your groceries are sitting in huge pile because you decided to linger and not go on to do your business. Your journey has halted and you haven’t reached your destination. The frozen food is getting warm and the hot food cold.

In life, who you surround yourself with has such a crazy impact on your life. It morphs your thinking because you become immersed in a way of life. If societal status and gathering ‘things’ are the ambitions of your friends, then you may slowly find that those become your ambitions as well. And we may not want to admit this but think about the way you speak…the words you use….those bits and pieces you pick up along the way. I never said the word “awesome” before I came to Rochester but now it’s ingrained in my vocabulary….a little gift from my classmates who said it so frequently. I’ve passed on “altrighty” to my roommate. You see how this works. These things solely creep up on us and we don’t realize until it’s ingrained.

You want great habits and ways of thinking to seep into you. You want peer pressure to have a useful purpose like encouraging you never to cheat on your spouse or to volunteer to tutor young kids or adults. You don’t want it telling you to buy the latest non-essential object as the only way to feel worthy.

You do this by surrounding yourself with the right kind of people, the ones who are going to the same place you are. It’s the reason in your career you’re encouraged to join associations related to your fields. You get all the good info on the recent developments in your industry and a group of people that can help if you get stuck in a problem.

It’s easy to see this applied to a career so why is it so difficult to apply to our lives?

Don’t Settle for Mediocrity….Be Extraordinary

“Along the way, we settle,” began Seth Godin’s post. And I thought about this, along the way sometimes we do settle. We settle in relationships and we settle in jobs. In relationships we just don’t want to be lonely….in jobs we just need to make some money.

The personal development books will tell you, you don’t have to settle and any motivational speaker worth his/her salt will tell you the same. But then you take a step back and look at your life and wonder “Gosh, how do they really expect me not to settle? These are just easy words; they don’t have to live my life.”

And you know what, that’s true…they don’t have to live your life. But I’m going to throw my hat in the ring and also say settling is bad. I’m a realist although if you met me you’d probably think I’m a naïve optimist :-). I want everything to be amazing but I recognize things aren’t always so simple for everyone in the world so giving up-in-the-air solutions is a sure-fire way for people to turn away….I’ve seen people lose their faith because they aren’t given practical solutions beyond “Trust in God”.

And I trust in God but sometimes when dealing with real issues you need a lot more than those words.

Let’s take a look at jobs. Sometimes you do have to settle for a job which isn’t ideal because without it you might not be able to repay student loans or support your family. However that job doesn’t have to be the end of the line; there may be skills you can glean that help you get to where you want to go. There may be connections you can make. Don’t look at the situation with a closed mind; view it as a stepping stone to getting you where you want to go.

Relationships are a little bit more tricky…it’s obviously completely unfair to be using someone as a stepping stone to someone else. But with these I’d have to recommend that settling is not an option. If you know what you want and what makes you happy then you deserve nothing less and anything less will make you unhappy. Of course you shouldn’t have a laundry list of things that need to be checked off…people are only human remember!! But I’m sure there are some key traits you don’t want to compromise on. So don’t…..and these key things are usually better as character traits instead of superficial qualities.

So what makes me qualified at just 26 years of age to be speaking such things? Let’s say I’ve been there and done that. Settling never makes you happy.

All About the People - Choose to Make a Difference

Every day consciously or unconsciously we choose to “make a difference” in the lives of those who are close to our hearts. These thoughts-become-actions could take the form of a note of affirmation to your spouse or child greeting them on the bathroom mirror, a spontaneously-purchased macchiato for a co-worker, or simply delivering a “random act of kindness” to someone within your own community.

It is in this giving that we DO receive. It may come as a tender hug & kiss, an enthusiastic high-five, or an appreciative smile! All of these actions assist in building and maintaining relationships! But it does require something of each of us ~ a call to respond and to act!


Often in the hecticness of our lives we lose track that we are also residents of a much larger community ~ a global community! In our attempt to bring understanding to this concept, we as humans tend to “shrink our world” to a size we can comprehend. However, technology continually challenges us with the ever-expanding realization that we are all residents of a vibrant, diverse, colorful federation. Just as with living within our family and working communities, being residents of this global community has its accompanying social responsibility.

When we arrive at that place of acknowledging our residency and its corresponding responsibilities, most of us feel entirely overwhelmed! But if we can grasp that it is first and foremost “relationship”, it provides us with a framework on which everything is hung!

Previously we have spoken about “why (we) should care”. Through the establishment of its principles, Fair Trade assists in providing essential framework for implementing our social responsibility. Ulitilizing those principles, we at Kingdom Ventures, Inc. work to bring about economic empowerment to our suppliers through the vehicle of relationships. It is our heart to invest in the lives of others to bring hope, restore dignity, and plan for their economic sustainability.

As residents in this dynamic, diverse world-wide community, we each, at minimum, have one role to play. Economically it is the role of an educated and appreciative consumer! But it is not for your consumption alone. Catch the Fair Trade vision, invite others along on the live-changing journey, and together let us make it a priority to be deliberate in how we live, invest, shop ….and relate…in our global community!