Coca-Cola, Maleficent, cleverness, the morning news and a tablespoon of hope!

Some people are simply ridiculously clever. Seriously. They actually make me feel bad about myself, and frankly, I'm somewhat clever myself (necessity for my job!). In the last few days, it feels as if the world has been insisting I take note of the brilliance of humans... not just their intelligence, but our capacity for creativity.

Have you seen the new Coke campaign? Someone at the Coca-Cola headquarters said, "Hey... what if we put names on the bottles... 'Share this Coke with John' or 'Share this Coke with Sara'"... the timing on this couldn't be better... in the midst of the "selfie" craze (does anyone actually know the correct spelling of that word by the way?) what the Coke folks have done is create an ad campaign that actually generates more ad campaigns... I go to the store and see a bottle that has a name on it of someone I know. I buy it. I take a selfie with the bottle and upload the picture to my social media websites... boom. They put a name on the bottle, and I just gave them an audience of over 1000 people looking at me drinking their product. But it gets better! I tag that friend (who's name is on the bottle) and it appears on her page, and all of her friends see it... then maybe she thinks it is cool, and does the same when she sees a bottle. Simple. Brilliant. The Coke people are using the greatest fad of the moment to sell their stuff... yes, it is terrible for you, but really? How much fun is this?

In other "clever news"... I went to see the film Maleficent a couple of days ago. As a kid raised on Disney, I was initially shocked to see a cute-wide-eyed-sweet child with the name of one of the worst Disney villains (because come on... who curses a BABY???). Still, I watched, and was enchanted by a story that explained why the horn-sporting-black-cloak-donning-blood-red-lipstick-wearing super villain was so mean. Some clever writer got to the heart of what I keep trying to teach my kids... people are not "bad"... they behave badly out of fear or ignorance or pain... and the movie showed that- demonstrated her pain and fear and allowed a flat character of my childhood to become a multifaceted human. Humans are cool. Humans have depth and goodness and make mistakes and yet are AMAZINGLY clever.

This is a picture of little Maleficent making a friend...

So... in the news this morning there is horror, chaos, hatred, war and a downed airplane with hundreds of passengers who died... and here I am... saddened, but hopeful. Hopeful because we are so clever... hopeful because we all have a story and when we understand that, we can help each other feel less pain and fear... and our collective cleverness might just be strong enough to make this world a better place. (Imagine a heart shaped emoticon here.. I'm just not clever enough to know how to get one into the blog)...