Act Of Generosity Made A Big Difference In Man’s Life
Just when you start feeling cynical about human nature, along comes a letter like the one we received last week.
A couple of weeks ago in this column we recounted the true story of a busy woman who was at a bank when a frantic woman next to her freaked out because the teller wouldn’t let her withdraw $20 from an account. The busy woman handed the stranger $20 and then moments later, saw her give it to a man in a truck.
She figured it might be a drug deal. But the money was repaid to the bank and forwarded to the busy woman.
A man we’ll call Michael wrote us the following: “I was the man in the truck. The young lady was an ex-drug user and alcoholic and she was going out of her way to help me, also an exdrug user.”
Michael explained that he was pulling his life back together, and enrolled in school, when he was thrown out of his apartment. Broke and depressed, he was about to return to crime when his friend came to his rescue. He used the $20 for some food and for gas for the truck.
“I was homeless for the entire month of October, but never missed one hour of school or any homework and finished my first quarter with a 3.6. So I was the man in the truck. I want you to relay to the lady at the bank who helped with the money our deepest thanks and to let her know that the money was used wisely, not for drugs.”
By the way, Michael’s letter was beautifully written. We hope he’s studying writing in college. He’s a natural at it. And his letter taught some good lessons, such as: Things are not always as they appear. If your instinct says help, then help. Small gestures of generosity can make big differences in people’s lives.
Query: Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution that actually worked? Tell us about your success stories.
No resolutions: Or you might want to tell us about how not making any resolutions changed your life for the better. Marcia Yudkin, a Boston newsletter publisher, is hoping more people will dispense with resolutions. They don’t work, she says. Yudkin suggests, instead, relabeling your “problems” as skills and quit trying so hard to change. For instance, “someone who often starts and rarely finishes projects might do well as a brainstormer.”
He said: “Many names are almost gone: Gertrude, Myrtle, Agnes, Bernice, Hortense, Edna, Doris and Hilda. They were wide women, cotton-clothed, early rising. You had to move your mouth to say their names, and they meant strength, spear, battle and victory.” From the poem “Mourning the Dying American Female Names” by Hunt Hawkins.