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I’ve been thinking a little bit recently about real gratitude versus gratitude-with-strings-attached. I sometimes have been catching myself doing nice things because I want something in return.
By that, I mean, sometimes I catch myself doing things like dropping a few dollars in a tip jar but waiting until the people behind the counter are looking. I need the acknowledgement that I did something kind.
About five years ago, I ducked out of my office for an hour around lunchtime. I went to a nearby Cumberland Farms gas station and got a soda. I used to like to get out of the building for a bit, grab a drink and make a call to a sober friend or two.
When I left, I turned left onto the street to head back to the office, and as I did so, I saw that there was a wallet that had basically exploded onto the road. There were cards scattered all over the intersection.
I remember driving through the intersection and thinking, “Sucks for that person,” and then getting about a tenth of a mile before feeling like I’d have wanted somebody to have tried to collect those items and get them back to me.
So I turned around and went back to the gas station, parked and then ran out in the middle of the intersection a few times to gather up everything. After five minutes or so, I had everything I could find: the wallet, a woman’s driver’s license and a bunch of credit cards and insurance IDs.
I went back to the office and spent an hour or two trying to track down this person. It was an older woman who didn’t have any kind of social media footprint that I could find, but I eventually tracked down her son-in-law, who was a teacher at a local high school.
Eventually, about three hours after I ran around under a red light trying to collect everything, I heard directly from her. She was very grateful, and asked to meet back at the same gas station a few minutes later. I met her and her husband over there and gave them the wallet.
On the drive over there, I caught myself thinking, “I wonder what they’re going to give me. I hope they’re rich. This could be my lucky day. Maybe $100? Maybe more? That’s how much saving those credit cards must have been worth.”
So by the time I got to the gas station, I had whipped myself into a frenzy that I had just done a $100 good deed.
The woman and her husband were already there, and they were extremely grateful in person. They thanked me over and over again. The woman said to me, “I should give you something for saving me so many headaches,” and I recall waving her off, saying, “Nah, I just hope everyone would have done the same thing.”
I don’t think I really meant it. Deep down, I wanted her to say, “No, I absolutely insist that I give you, the Mother Theresa of Cumberland Farms, this $100. Actually, make it $1,000.”
But she didn’t. She had said thank you, mentioned giving me something, accepted “No, thank you” as an answer, and she was going to move on.
What an a*****e. How dare she not recognize that I was playing hard to get with my gratitude?
I spun my wheels for a bit driving back to the office, lamenting what jerks people can be. Then I made a call to a sober friend and told that story, and before I could even listen for a response, I realized I was the jerk.
In my life, gratitude can’t have an expectation attached to it. I can’t think that if I do something my kids want, they will come home and scoop the litterboxes and do the dishes. Not going to happen. I can’t expect if I do a good job at work that there will be a promotion and bonus attached to it.
And I don’t know what I expect when I pause my tip-giving to make sure a sufficient amount of the staff notices. What am I looking for there, a standing ovation? Should the CEO appear like a genie and grant me a lifetime of free meals at the restaurant?
An hour later, I was in the right head space. I had done the right thing, and figured out the right reason a little bit later, and it ended up not being a $100 good deed. It was a million dollar good deed, just without the actual million dollars, because I felt gratitude on a very deep level.
The kicker to the story? About a week later, I got a letter in my office mailbox. It was a note from the woman whose wallet I had found. I don’t remember giving her my name or address, but she hunted me down somehow. She had written a quick note on a Post It that she attached to a copy of a letter she sent to the president of my company. In that letter, she described what happened, and she said she knew our company would always be successful because it hired wonderful people like me.
As I finished the letter, I felt even more gratitude than I had before, and right as I was about to fold it up and put it back in the envelope, I noticed there was something else in there.
And it was… a $100 gift card.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS
"When it comes to gratitude, my mind is like teflon. When it comes to resentments, my mind is like flypaper. Meetings help me to reverse that phenomenon."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, from July 2005, by David K. of Wilmington, Delaware)
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