Acknowledging Others Is No Tiny Thing - It Might Save Us

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The other day, in the throes of the holiday mayhem of the things that needed to be done or might have needed to be — but good luck with that — a young man made my week.

It started in a parking lot, of all places, between my car and whatever store I needed to visit for the umpteenth time. For the record, I do shop online. I’m not a cave lady, though I endeavor to be one, but not everything is best attained right outside your front door, packed inside three nestled boxes with plastic packing pillows and polystyrene peanuts.

As I made my way to the store, a young mother and her roughly four-year-old son were walking towards me. The mother was doing her best to maneuver an empty shopping cart with one hand toward the cart corral, but also to maneuver her son repeatedly with the other hand, as he was having a reactive situation that had him turning back towards the store or towards their car or towards anyplace other than the direction his mother was shepherding them.

It was a tough juggling act. The cart had no sense of direction, beholden only to where gravity led its wheels. The son needed her love and attention more than anything.

I did the most obvious thing to my mind.

“I’ll take the cart, if that’s okay.”

It was one of those common cart passes that shoppers do with each other sometimes. I’ll take your discard cart to relieve you the task of returning it to its home, while relieving me the task of having to retrieve one for myself. But as soon as I approached the return corral, I veered the cart into the collection channel. My intent was to help the struggling mother, not get a cart for myself. It would be easier to get one inside the store.

It was a nice thing to do, for sure, but so extremely tiny. You’d do the same thing. It was more about efficiency in my mind: help someone who needs extra bandwidth for more important matters.

I continued walking towards the store when a young man came up from behind. He looked straight in my eyes.

“That was the nicest thing you just did,” he said. His voice was earnest, his face filled with appreciation. He genuinely meant what he said. He could have just walked on by and thought it to himself, and it surprised the heck out of me. What I’d done was such a write-off: kind, but minuscule. Normally, I would have done my best to accept his acknowledgement while also not taking credit. I have a hard time taking credit, for the record.

But this time was different.

This young man had a genuine way about him, and his appreciation for my small act opened a window in me. Acknowledging others is a beautiful thing. I know this, of course, and so do you, but this time it was extra, or different, or I saw it from a unique angle. This time, I saw how helpful this kind of thing can be for the world. That man’s face, voice, effort, connection: that was the beautiful event in the parking lot, and I could see it clearly.

I’m not trying to brush off my kindness toward the struggling mother. Instead, I’m realizing how powerful it is to walk up to people with the express intent of letting them know you see them and you are touched and inspired by their actions. Since I’m into learning about plotlines lately, it’s as if the act of kindness is a scene in a movie that has a theme larger than kindness. It’s a movie about an intricate space where people see each other.

It makes me think back to one of the most treasured moments I keep on a shelf in my mind. It came from my grandfather. We were sitting next to each other in a theater, part of an audience for some show in which one of our family members was performing — no clue what show or who. What I haven’t forgotten are the short, direct words my grandfather turned to me and shared.

“Stephanie, I’m very proud of you.”

He extrapolated on this briefly, though I can’t recall exactly what he said. His implied message, I believe, was that I’d made it through some hard times as a teenager, and now I was going for my dreams, working hard towards my MFA.

This acknowledgement remains one of the most valued things to me. It stunned me when he said it. While I rarely think of it anymore, my brain hasn’t flushed it out with so many of the other memories long gone. It had teeth. It mattered that someone had seen me.

These days, life is speedy, distracted, and constantly yanking us this way or that. It’s easy to get pulled onto this breakneck freight train, and when we do, it’s easy to forget we live among others and that all of us have a need to feel like we live together rather than in isolation. It seems to me that one of the ways we feel pulled together, rather than existing in parallel, is by looking at each other and sharing what we see. I see you, and you’re pretty cool, and thank you for that.

The reason thanks are in order is that each time another inspires us, the safer and more exquisite this life becomes.

As I go into the new year, this solar-inspired marker of time, I hope I remember that my actions are not only for me, but for the species, even if it’s only for my local species, the ones in the parking lots, to name a few. Each one of us matters. May this next year hold that fact closely and with clear vision.

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Happy New Year to you, my friends.