Lost Marbles
Imagine with me, for a moment.
You come home and find on your porch a package, delivered by UPS. The address is correct, but you don’t know the name of the person it is addressed to.
What do you do?
Do you call UPS and try to refuse the package? Do you look at the business in the return address and try to contact them? Maybe you set it aside for a few days, thinking that maybe someone will come claim it. If you are brave and ambitious, maybe you wander the neighborhood, searching for the person that goes with the name on the box.
Or do you open it?
Let’s say curiosity got the better of you and you open it. Inside, you find a box, wrapped in birthday wrapping paper, with an envelope on top, presumably with a card inside. Now what? Do you redouble your efforts to find the person for whom the gift was intended? Do you now set it aside?
Or do you open it?
Last week was my brother’s birthday. I sent him a gift, UPS. To the wrong address. It was a house a few doors down from where it was supposed to go. My sister-in-law went to ask about the package, but the people weren’t home. She left a message, and a couple days later, they brought the gift to the correct house. I am thankful for that, truly. But the neighbor had opened the gift, threw away the box, card, wrapping paper, and packaging. To be completely fair to the unintended receiver, he said that the postal service said they couldn’t take it back.
Of course they couldn’t. It was sent via UPS. It said so right on the box. It seems obvious to me that the unintended recipient was going to keep the gift. I wonder…..did the other ideas not occur to him to try to find the intended birthday person? In asking the US Post Office for help was his conscience cleared? Or was he intending on keeping it all along?
I don’t know the person who mistakenly received my brother’s gift. I can’t honestly speak to his motivation. Was it laziness, ignorance, greed, lack of imagination, lack of time? I do know that most of the people in my life would have tried harder to find the intended recipient of the gift. I believe I am blessed to be connected with some of the most extraordinary people on the planet…but I don’t believe they are they only people that would try a little harder to help a person out.
Because that what this is about. How far are you willing to step out of your routine and your comfort zone, how much time are you willing to take, to help out another person. It may be that you will expend more energy to help someone you know, someone you love. Sometimes, though, wouldn’t it feel great to go out of your way for a complete stranger? I do feel as though there is quite a lot of selfishness seen all over the news and social media. But we don’t have to be that. The smallest act of kindness can make the biggest difference.
Even if it is just delivering a game of Chinese Checkers.
Peace,
Kathie