Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:50 — 5.6MB) | Embed
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, my favorite cake is ice cream cake, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a lesson I learned from mowing the grass.
Today’s Fun Fact of the Day is: Did you know? Lawns are very efficient oxygen producers. They are about three times more effective than trees. And, their season to produce oxygen is much longer. Even a smaller sized lawn (50 ft. x 50 ft.) releases enough oxygen daily to meet the needs of a family of four for 24 hours and absorbs carbon dioxide, ozone, hydrogen fluoride and other toxins.
Friday Forum
I want you to be a part of the Friday Forum! Friday Forum is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can participate in Friday Forum by visiting our Feedback Page or calling our voice feedback line at 304-837-2278.
What I Learned Yesterday:
Kari and I got married in 1999 and bought our first house in 2002. We’d been living in Wichita Falls, Texas for a year. We spent the first year in an apartment and when I lease was up we decided it was time to buy a place of our own. Had we known that we’d only live in the house for one year we wouldn’t have made that choice, but at the time it looked like we’d be residing in Wichita Falls for several years.
It was a 3 bedroom house that had been built in the 1950’s, wiped out by a tornado in the 1970’s and then rebuilt. It had a big window in the living room and french doors in the dining room that let in a lot of natural light. The french doors opened up to a covered patio and a large size yard with a swing set and storage shed.
The front yard wasn’t all that big. It had a tall tree out near the curb and a big bushy tree near the front porch. My grandparents were at the age that they could no longer take care of their yard and had hired someone to take care of it for them. So it worked out that they had an extra lawn mower. They gave it to me so I could use it for my new yard.
I don’t enjoy mowing my yard now and I didn’t enjoy it then either.
The people that lived directly across the street from me seemed to take every inch of grass growth as a personal act of rebellion. They had a whole fleet of yard implements that they would use to whip their yard into shape. Every edge was crisp. Every blade was trimmed flat. It was green and lush. Right next to them was their polar opposite.
Their neighbor didn’t see the need to mow his grass. He mowed it as seldom as necessary, and only then it was so that he didn’t get fined by the city. I’m not making that up. His yard was usually a foot tall, filled with weeds, and looked more like a science experiment than a lawn.
I think he also let his grass grow just so he could get under the skin of his neighbors.
My neighbor was an elderly lady. I can’t recall her name, but she was very friendly. She had lived on that street for 50 years. She’d been there when the tornado wiped out the house in the ‘70’s. In fact, if it wasn’t for her, I never would have known our house had been rebuilt.
She was inspiring. Even though she was elderly, that didn’t stop her from getting out there and mowing her lawn.
One day as I was finishing up my yard I looked over and noticed that she hadn’t yet mowed hers. So while my mower was still running, I made my over to her yard and I mowed as much of her yard as I could. Once I was done I put my mower back in the shed and called it a day.
I thought I had done it without her knowing. I wanted it to be a mystery.
It turned out that she figured it out. I thought she was away from home when I did it, but she wasn’t. She saw me do it. The next day she came over to our house with something in her hand. It was a dessert. A delicious one. She was so grateful that I had mowed her yard and wanted to express her appreciation by way of feeding me with sweets.
Here’s what I learned.
I still hate mowing yards. It’s just not a thing that I enjoy. Some people do, but I am not one of those people. You know what I do enjoy? Helping people.
When I got done mowing her yard I felt good. I felt a lot better and had a lot more energy than I did when I finished mowing my yard. I had just done more work, and yet I had more energy. Doing something for someone else even made a task I don’t enjoy…enjoyable.
I did it with no expectation of compensation of any type. I did it because I saw a need and recognized that I had the ability to take care of that need. But what happened was that I was rewarded with a tasty treat. Not only that, but my wife enjoyed some of the dessert too.
There’s a great principle here. That is, when we give of ourselves to help others, it will almost always come back to us in a way that benefits us and those around us. When we serve others and make their lives better, we make our lives better too.
Does that mean that we are selfish? Not if we’re doing it right. We should never serve others or give to others with the expectation or out of motivation that we will be the ultimate beneficiary. We should give to others and serve them with the expectation that what we’re doing will help them and nothing more.
So here’s my challenge. This challenge is for you and me both. Are you ready? All this month I’ve been asking for Friday Forum submissions that reflect an act of love that you’ve seen or done. So far, none have come in. I’m not throwing stone here, because I don’t have anything to share either. So the challenge is simple. Show an act of kindness to someone and then let me know about it. You can post your act of kindness on the Facebook page, or just call in a short message telling me your name, where you’re from and one or two sentences about what you did.
Why am I asking you to do this? First, it will make someone’s day brighter and make the world a better place. But the second reason is that I believe what you do will inspire someone else. Your act of kindness will give each of us ideas on how we can show kindness. And you never know how you might have a profound impact on someone else.
Are you ready? Let’s do it!
I’m Darrell Darnell 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.
[sc:stuff]