I was standing in line at Personal Lottery Central, minding my own business, making sure I stayed on the “Stay 6’ apart” sticker on the floor.
“Hey!” The guy leaving the store turned from the door and walked toward me. “Hey!” He called out, grinning like I was a long-lost relative. “How’s it going? Haven’t seen you in a while.”
I smiled and said I was doing well. But I was thinking, Who is the guy and why does he talk like he knows me?
He kept talking about how good it was to see me again, and I kept wondering. I ask questions: How’s the family? Still at the same job? The kind of questions that give clues, help identify from where I would know him. Nothing helped. I couldn’t place him to save my life.
Finally I shut up and just listened. Apparently, months and months ago I had done something, or said something that helped him handle a sticky situation. Between you and me, I don’t remember anything about it. I do recall being where he said we were. I recall chatting with a lot of people and sharing my ideas and thoughts on this or that. But as far as helping someone solve a problem? Nope. I got nothing.
But apparently, for him if was a very big deal. “Changed my life,” is how he put it.
So it ends up, I can’t remember him. He will never forget me.
That’s scary. If I go through life oblivious to any good I might do, is it not as possible I am going through life not knowing the harm I might do? The answer is, of course, yes. But before I slog down that depressing path, I will think about those people who unknowingly have aided me.
There was the uncle of one of my students, an anthropologist who studied death rituals. I kid you not, he did that for a living. But in the five minutes we chatted he gave me wonderful tools for dealing with grief and loss. Tools that twenty-five years later helped me though the most horrible time in my life. Does he remember that short conversation in a church parking lot? Most likely not. Will I ever forget it? No, never, not ever
There was the author of a murder mystery who taught me the quickest way to change sheets on a bed. Her thing was writing a mystery, but she made easy an irritating chore. I think of her every time I put clean sheets on the bed.
There was the waiter who when my husband was in the hospital and my tired, hungry toddler, keying off my anxiety, was fussing enough to drive me crazy, leaned over to whisper, “Mom, we’ve all been two.” I remember his kindness and try to emulate it, each time I see a parent dealing with a squirrely, noisy baby.
I could go on, but three examples are enough. I could also share the hurt and harm caused by truly thoughtless, in the most elemental meaning of the word, things that have been said or done to me. I chose not to do that because – well, I guess I do have another example – a wise woman once said, “You find what you are looking for.”
Could it also be, unintentional as it might be, that we act and speak because we found what we are looking for, for what we presuppose will be there? If we presume hurt, we speak and act hurtful? If we presume good, we speak and do better acts?
I want to look for the accidental good things that have happened to me. I want to do that because if I have any unintentional, need I repeat, thoughtless effect on anyone I might meet, I pray God it is for good.