No, it’s not the finger gesture that first comes to mind. Let me give you some context. I travel. I travel a lot. And I love to travel. But today my travels found me in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua and I was having an abnormally and absurdly stressful morning. Yep, the kind of morning that makes you want to crawl back in bed and call out “do-over” for the entire day. Ahhh…
There was no way I wanted my stressful morning to snowball into an entire day gone bad. Obviously I needed to regroup and salvage my day so it wouldn’t turn out to be ‘one of those days’ where the ‘domino effect‘ of a bad morning ends up ruining the entire day.
From past experience, I know that a good bout of the outdoors, exercise, and the feeling I get from sweating tends to clear my head and usually allows me to put things back in perspective.
So I laced up my athletic shoes and out the door I jogged caught up in my own thoughts and getting lost in my own inner world and lets be honest…ruminating in negativity. And then something happened about halfway through my run.
Some One Gave Me The Finger Gesture Today And It Made My Day
Something in the corner of my eye caught my attention. As I slowly turned my head there sitting on a bench alongside the ocean in Nicaragua was an elderly British man about 90-years old dressed in a faded ratty red shirt with the saying “Remember The Turtle Won” prominently displayed on the front of his shirt. He had the most beautiful smile on his face and was giving me the thumbs up.
It took me by such a surprise that it pulled me right out of my one-woman inner world pity-party and had me laughing and smiling at the same time. On a morning where nothing was going right and I was impatient and at the end of my rope, this small and simple kind gesture from a stranger was exactly what I needed and made all the difference in lifting my spirits.
I was filled with gratitude for his small gesture and hoped he knew what a difference it made. And that’s when it dawned on me that he would have no way of knowing unless I took the time to share that gratitude with him and say ‘thank you’.
The American author and motivational speaker Leo Buscaglia said it best, “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around”.
And so I turned around and jogged back, sat down on the small bench with him, and proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes having the most heartfelt conversation with him. And in that conversation I told him that I was having a really bad morning and how much of a difference he made in turning my day around and that I really appreciated it.
And then to my surprise he too confided in me that he was having a difficult day as well. Today was the 2nd anniversary of his late wife’s death. And while time had passed and he had moved through some of his feelings of grief and loss, today ‘the anniversary’ brought back a swell of emotions.
He went on to explain to me that while his wife and he used to love to travel, do to health circumstances towards the end of her life, it got to a point where they could no longer travel.
Like me, one of their favorite things to do while traveling was meeting people. And while they could no longer travel the last few years of her life, they found that by sitting on this bench it provided them the opportunity to meet and talk with travelers from all around the world.
Today as he lay in bed, blanketed in sadness, he heard his wife’s voice telling him that he needed to start reconnecting with the world. He decided to go to the bench along the ocean where they used to enjoy many an afternoon and silently honor her memory by reaching out.
Shortly after arriving at the bench he saw me and decided it was time to reconnect with travelers again.
A moment of kindness is simple. It’s easy. And it makes such a difference. Be that stranger.
Grow Your Own Cure.