Generally speaking I really like the idea of random acts of kindness... that to make the world a better place, you just do something nice for another person. You do that nice thing not because you want "credit" for doing a nice thing, but because you see an opportunity to make someone's day better, and it also happens to make you feel better for recognizing that chance and seizing the opportunity...
So, this week... A work colleague was struggling through some things and seemed to need a pick up. I decided to send that person lunch because lunch is the one thing he seems to always miss... It was delivered in an effort to make the act be anonymous because, quite honestly, I just wanted that person to know that someone was thinking of them, but I didn't necessarily want to be recognized as the person doing it. I just wanted to make a gesture and leave it at that...
Fast forward to lunch delivery... Lunch is delivered, person does not know who sent the delivery so he inquires among the other staff... Rest of the department turns a sandwich delivery into all afternoon speculation and drama. Seriously... Seriously? If I had sent the guy a lap dance, maybe we would have something to talk about...it was a SANDWICH people. Another friend filled me in on some of the gossip...
I have to say, the whole "incident" just really annoys me... This week has been an extraordinarily difficult one at work... it has been announced that branches will close and employees will lose their jobs; it has been splashed on the front cover of our local newspaper. Don't we have more important things to worry about than who had lunch delivered to someone? We have associates who depend on the bank to take care of their families... they no longer have the security that they used to because of a poor economy that none of us can control. It is a helpless feeling to know you can't "fix" that situation. So, in the scheme of the events that are going on all around us, does it make any sense to spend an afternoon making a huge deal speculating about who decided to show a work friend a small (very small) kindness?
My final thoughts on this... and I promise I will stop thinking about it afterwards... In a time when there is so much uncertainty all around us, in a time when people are so focused on themselves that they take each other for granted and rarely go out of their way for others, that is a time when we need to stop, look around, and ask ourselves what we can do to make things feel better... So I sent a sandwich this week in an effort to cheer another person up...didn't seem like a big deal to me, but apparently it was. The bottom line for me, though? If I could do it all over again, I would not change a thing... This world needs random acts of kindness; our friends need to know that we care about them; we all need to stop for a minute and consider someone other than ourselves.
1 comment:
You deserve credit. It was a nice thing to do. Period. But it's hard not to let stuff like that get in the way of good intentions.I have had backlash myself from R.A.O.K's...sometime ask me about the blind guy who tried to smack me w/ his cane. But I still do them. It's not about the outcome, it's about the impulse.
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