There’s a place a town or two over from me where I can go at 11 am on a weekday and get their Apple Salad with romaine lettuce, julienned apples, manchego cheese, craisins, and sunflower seeds, and a side of beautifully handcut fries (with fry sauce, of course.)
I can sit in a booth by myself with my food and my Diet Coke and open my computer and put on my headphones and work.
It’s delightful.
The last time I was there, it was a little past 11 am and the booths were gone. So I chose a table with a bench seat against the wall and started working on my client notes. I had just put in my headphones – but hadn’t yet started my focus music — when three guys sat at the table next to me.
They started talking about business moves (the home development business, from what I could surmise), and golf resorts they’d played, and a private jet one was in yesterday, and the high school and college sports they follow, and by then, I was so curious about where this was going that I never did turn my music on. (As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a really good eavesdropper.)
It was clear two of the men were on the development side of things and one was on the contractor side of things. One of the development guys was asking more questions and was super engaged. It took the entire conversation for me to figure out that the contractor guy (a concrete worker) wanted some work from either of the development guys. He didn’t ask right away and when he did, it was without desperation.
The engaged development guy was kind. Before he left, he got the information he needed, gave the contractor some compliments on his logo and branding, told the contractor exactly what jobs he might be able to help his company with, and explained exactly when he could expect to hear from him.
The other development guy, let’s call him Justin, was the exact opposite of engaged. He was sitting apart, aloof, on his phone, completely disinterested. After a brief hello, he didn’t say much else or even look in the contractor’s direction.
This conversation was not my business – literally – and yet what I observed has stuck with me.
The engaged guy behaved exactly the way we hope a successful, busy person would behave: he listened, asked questions, figured out what the contractor needed, gave him clear information, and followed through with specifics. “Justin” was physically at the same lunch and somehow contributed almost nothing to the human interaction.
Attention is one of the clearest ways we communicate to another person that they matter.
Justin could have looked up. He could have asked a question. He could have joined the conversation. He could have kindly told the contractor what he could or couldn’t offer. He could have been present.
How often are we the person half-listening while looking at our phone? How often does someone tell us something important and we respond without really entering the conversation? How often are we technically there with our spouse, child, parent, sibling, friend, coworker, customer – while our attention is somewhere else? How often do we miss the simple, easy, kind things we can do?
In my case, probably more often than I’d like.
What the engaged developer did was incredibly ordinary. I was there. I watched.
He was just kind and curious. He made small talk. He listened. He responded to what was actually being said. He gave his time to sit across from someone who needed a leg up.
I’ve hesitated using the poem (below) in a blog post because I know it’s made the rounds and could be overused right now. But it fits so well with what I’m trying to say.
It’s by Danusha Laméris, and it speaks of the value of small human kindnesses:
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
I can’t wait to hear what small kindnesses you are noticing – or what changes when you give someone a little more of your attention. And if you’d like help being more present in the relationships that matter to you, I’d love to help.
PS I like your hat.
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PPS If you liked this post – or any others, I’d love you to pass me and my work on to a friend. They can find out much more about me here if they’re interested!
