Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:23 — 6.0MB) | Embed
Small Gesture, Big Impact
It takes only a small gesture to positively influence your own or someone else’s life – just changing your hot cocoa mug to a different color can make your enjoyment of an already delicious beverage even sweeter. Well, during a very normal conversation in my car recently, something equally small really made me stop and think.
It was early afternoon on a Thursday. I had just picked up my daughter, Lila, who’s in second grade, from her elementary school, and as we often do on our drive home, we were talking about the highlights of the day. In between all the discussions of the fun she had in technology class and what games she played during recess, Lila announced with a great amount of enthusiasm, “Mom put a raspberry in with my blackberries in my lunchbox!”
Now my wife is always very careful to pack Lila nutritious things in her lunch, but the fruits are pretty much interchangeable depending on what’s seasonal and available at the grocery store. Lila enjoys raspberries and blackberries equally; in fact, blackberries might have a slight edge in her order of fruit preferences. So why would one red raspberry sitting atop her container of blackberries cause such a moment of happiness?
I think it was just the surprise element that gave my daughter a smile. It was cute, the little oddball red berry lying among the purple. The small gesture was like a celebration of something different among the ordinary, even though the standout item itself was nothing particularly remarkable.
As I sat there thinking about how easy it was to give Lila a little joy in her day, I immediately thought to myself there in the driver’s seat, “This would make a good Stuff I Learned Yesterday.” I started thinking about how symbolically, the raspberry was like the happy non-conformist, unafraid to be herself in a sea of hum-drum blackberries who never think outside the box. Oh, to be the noble individualist raspberry!
But when I stopped to think about it, I realized quickly that this was not the message of the simple pleasure my daughter derived from this small gesture. Lila doesn’t care about fitting in among her peers – not yet anyway – nor do probably any of her second grade friends. Seven-year-olds, for the most part are accepting of their quirky classmates, not judging them for their lack of designer clothes or what music they listen to. As someone who works in a high school full-time, I realized I was putting too mature a spin on Lila’s enjoyment. I was overthinking it.
She liked the raspberry because it was a surprise. Something unexpected. And don’t we all need that every now and then to shake up our routine? I immediately resolved to do something like that for someone else, and of course, the first person that sprung to mind was the originator of the fun: my wife, Stephanie.
I didn’t have to look far for inspiration. I knew that my wife packed an Andes mint in her own lunch most days, and I immediately came up with my idea while loading the dishwasher after I got home that afternoon. While Lila was doing her homework and we were waiting for my wife to get home, I grabbed the top mint in the pile from the open package in the cupboard. I carefully unwrapped the chocolate and set it to one side. Then, I took a Sharpie marker and wrote boldly across the inside of the green foil wrapper, “Hope you have a great day!” Lila, who spotted what I was doing, added a smiley face and a heart. I then folded the wrapper back around the after-dinner mint and placed it back in the package.
Now, of course, I had no idea if Stephanie would pack the mint in her lunch the next day or if she would even notice the writing inside the wrapper before throwing it away. But it didn’t matter! The small gesture had been made; her kind thought to Lila had been paid forward whether or not it hit its target.
Well, the fact of the matter is it wasn’t until the following Tuesday, five days after the raspberry event, that my wife took the mint with the note on the wrapper. The truth is, I had forgotten all about it by that time as had Lila. But when my wife came home that day, she came in from the garage with a smile on her face asking us, “Did you guys put a note in my chocolate?” and giving us big hugs. Apparently, she had had a really hard day at work and really needed a pick-me-up like what she found during her lunchtime chocolate break. In fact, had she opened it on Friday, the day after we wrote the note, it might not have had as big an impact since everyone’s happy on Friday when the work week ends whether they get a message in their chocolate or not!
But the fact that Lila and I had forgotten about the note shows how insignificantly easy our gesture had been. It took so little effort to put that surprise in Stephanie’s day that the payoff, whether big or small, can’t help but be a net profit for everyone . And here’s the funny part – it brought joy to Lila and I as well when we saw the smile on Stephanie’s face and got our hugs.
Here’s what I learned.
A smile can come from something very small, and we can give that gift to each other. A surprise or something unexpected in an otherwise routine or perhaps abnormally difficult day can bring joy many times more powerful than the energy it took to make the gesture.
Maybe you can do a little something for someone in your life. It doesn’t even have to be for a family member or even a friend – maybe a co-worker could use a little note on their desk calendar. Perhaps you made cookies and have leftovers that your officemate might enjoy. Or maybe your garden was bountiful and your neighbor would enjoy flowers or vegetables on their doorstep. A simple kindness can make others smile, bring you a sense of well-being, and make society better at large.
I’m Michael Ahr, and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
Follow Golden Spiral Media on Twitter at GSMPodcasts and Facebook.com/GoldenSpiralMedia. To subscribe to Stuff I Learned yesterday, visit GoldenSpiralMedia.com/subscribe. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes by going to goldenspiralmedia.com/iTunes.
[sc:stuff]