Tag: compassion

Posted on in health and wellness, relationships, science of happiness

Turn a frown upside down

smile and saying "a smile is the shortest distance between two people"

Several years ago, I was on a business trip with some colleagues. We’d had a long travel day and after checking in to our hotel around 8 pm, wandered down to the hotel bar for a late dinner. We sat for at least ten minutes without any service, so one of my co-workers got up and approached the waitress. He said she was quite surly when he talked to her, but she eventually came over with some menus.

I’ve always been fascinated by how a person’s actions can affect the actions of others, even more so since starting this blog, so I decided to embark on a little experiment. I wondered if I smiled broadly and was overly nice to our server, asking her questions about her day and thanking her every time she came to the table, whether by the end of our dinner, she would provide better service.

We ordered our drinks, and I kept smiling, laughing and making small talk when she brought us our meals. By the end of the evening, she still seemed stressed and unhappy, but was a bit more friendly and attentive.

There are many takeways from this night. The first is if someone is having a bad day, chances are it has nothing to do with you. Our waitress was probably on her feet for eight hours by the time our group strolled in. No doubt she was exhausted and wanting to go home. Who knows what she was dealing with at work or at home—a sick parent or child, mounting bills, an argument with her husband or friend. Since she never shared anything personal, we’ll never know.

The second is our actions did result in her being a bit nicer and attentive, so there was a positive correlation between our efforts to be nice and her actions.

The third takeaway is our group did get better service so it pays to be kind. As one of my old bosses used to say, “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar”.

Everyone can have a bad day. It seems to me people have short fuses these days and are starting to lose their capacity to show empathy and understanding. Even if you can’t turn someone’s frown upside down, you can give them grace and compassion.

Posted on in community, inspiration, mental health, relationships

The High Beams Story

quote "Give compassion, every day the average person fights epic battles never told just to survive"

If I had one wish for 2024, it would be for the world to be more compassionate.

Yesterday when we were driving to Cobourg for hockey, there was a person driving a bit erratically. As we passed them on the highway, I looked over, expecting to see someone on their phone and noticed they looked distressed.

 

We started talking about a post we’d seen on our local community Facebook group about high beams. Someone posted an apology to people driving on the highway the night before, saying they just had their new car in for servicing and something happened and they couldn’t unlock their high beams so they were blinding everyone on the drive home. Apparently it’s a known issue with a certain make and model of car.

 

I can only imagine how many people that night were cursing under their breath, calling them an a**hole and worse, thinking they were doing it on purpose or were just a bad driver.

 

It’s a good reminder that you never know what is going on in a person’s life and to be compassionate.

 

So the next time someone is short with you or does something that ticks you off, remember they may be having a bad day or fraught with worry, or something else may be going on that deserves your compassion instead of your censure.

 

Remember the high beams story.

Posted on in community, health and wellness, inspiration

Reflections on the next chapter from down under

Author on a recent trip to Canada

Special guest blog post by David Dawson

Recently I sang at the funeral of one of my fellow choristers who was only 20 years older than me. He was 85. It got me thinking of what I can still do with the remaining time left on my clock.

I was inspired in my reflections by a story in The Guardian about a psychiatrist who was diagnosed with bladder cancer and told he was going to die and daydreamed about becoming an actor. At the age of 63, he enrolled at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and this month, at age 80, is the lead in the play Freud’s Last Session, at the King’s Head Theatre in London.

There are the limitations now set by age, which are about personal energy levels and the insight of a lifetime of experiences. While becoming aware of my shortcomings in life, I have accepted that I did the best I could at the time with what I had to work with.

Rather than castigate myself for not trying hard enough or being resilient enough to achieve an unimaginable goal, I would like to think all of that has prepared me for the next period of my life where I hope to do the work I have been trained to do by those around me: filling my time as much as I can with small acts of kindness. While these are small happy acts for me, I can only hope they are huge blessings for those around me. For this, I am blessed.

I’d like to leave you with a quote from The Guardian:

 “The more we are able to accept our achievements are largely out of our control, the easier it becomes to understand that our failures, and those of others, are too. And that in turn should increase our humility and the respect with which we treat our fellow citizens. Ultimately, as the writer David Roberts put it, ‘Building a more compassionate society means reminding ourselves of luck, and of the gratitude and obligations it entails.”

David Dawson has been weathering the pandemic down under with his faithful sidekick Brad the dog by his side, musing on politics, social media, religion and life.