I remember hearing a story on the news about this young girl who was a waitress. She worked at this place where this man would come every single day for breakfast. Now, this man was said to be rude, grumpy, and just plain out mean, and none of the servers wanted to have anything to do with him. That left this young girl to be the one who served him everyday. As unfriendly and mean as they man may have been, the girl always did her best to be as nice as possible, because that was the right thing to do.
At one point, the people working at the restaurant noticed that the old man had not showed up for a couple days. They soon found out that he had died. What made this story newsworthy, though, was that in his will, the man had left that young girl, the girl who was willing to deal with him and be kind to him, his car.
Throughout my life, I've heard so much the phrase, "Be the bigger man." That is truly easier to say than do. If we take a look in politics, part of the reason candidates criticize another is because they were criticized first. It's only human nature to try to look good, so if we're attacked, we attack back in order to regain a sense of superiority or decency. In the course of human history, all it's taken for a war to start is for one nation to retaliate to an attack from another.
Now, in the example I gave, the girl got a reward for her kindness, but that's not to say that we will always get something in return for tolerance or being nice. We shouldn't be nice just because we hope to get something out of it, but because it's the right thing to do, even if it may be difficult at times. I can only hope that Uncle Jesse in Full House (a favorite show of mine when I was younger) was right when he said to the Olsen twin character that being nice was contagious. If we all just be kind to one another and do good regardless of how we're treated, it will affect others and change can and will slowly occur.
No comments:
Post a Comment