This morning, sitting in the complimentary breakfast room of the hotel I was staying at for a conference, I chose a small table and chairs. The dining room was busy with many events held the night before, including the baseball awards ceremony. Several tables near me were pushed together and a few boys gathered around them.
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They finished eating while I was eating and a young man brought back a chair that appeared to be missing from my table before leaving. Looking up, I noticed the other boys were throwing their empty plates into the trash and leaving the table clean and unscathed. Small and simple, but a very kind act. All the children at the table seemed polite, but the young man who returned the chair was certainly raised by his parents, who were taught to put something back when they took it.You are proud of him. I would have thought They weren't there to remind him they didn't know he was doing it. He did it anyway. In my practice, there are adults who do not follow this simple rule. Colleagues often bring their label printers to the office and forget to bring them back to the copy room. One time he went on vacation and locked his office with his printer inside. Of course I needed it when he was away.
These are certainly not serious or combustible violations. But it's a small joy that doing it will make everyone's day run much smoother.
You may have heard the saying that you die in a thousand tiny cuts. Think of it as a kind of polar opposite. Joy with a thousand small kindnesses.
