At the beginning of the year, just out of curiosity, I decided to keep track of my spending. I learned long ago that the business saying “if you can’t track it, you can’t manage it” is true.
Seeing little bits of your life written out in a log gives you interesting insights into your behavior—especially automatic behaviors that you do with little thought. Tracking things brings them into your awareness; you begin to pay attention—to operate in a more mindful way in that area of your life.
If you want to change your eating patterns, for example, keeping a written list of everything you eat will give you a lot of guidance about where you can begin. You’ll see where you’re operating mindlessly.
I began tracking my spending with the assumption that I was fairly careful about it. But we’re all pretty good at assuming things about ourselves that aren’t necessarily true. I thought it would be interesting to see what the numbers actually revealed.
So last Tuesday, as I was coming out of the grocery store with a full cart of goods, I was dismayed when a huge gust of wind caught the register tape that was sitting on one of the bags and blew it down the sidewalk. “Oh!” I said out loud in surprise.
“Was that yours?” a man asked.
“Yes!” I said. And he began running after it.
But the wind wasn’t giving up. The little paper blew danced across a street and skittered into an adjacent parking lot. The man wasn’t giving up either. He dodged traffic and followed that piece of paper until it finally came to rest under a parked car. And then he got down on his hands and knees and stretched under the car to retrieve it.
I applauded and told him he got the Sir Galahad medal as my hero of the day.
He beamed proudly as he handed it to me and said, “You have a happy day!” I told him he had certainly got it off to a happy start.
And he truly had! That a stranger would go to such lengths to retrieve a grocery slip—something most people toss away without a glance–showed me in a very real way how powerful one little act of kindness can be. I was genuinely touched.
And seeing how he beamed as he handed it to me was proof that the giver of kindness gets as much as he gives.
I kept the receipt on my desk all week, long after I’d sorted the items into categories—groceries, cat food, household goods—and entered them in my log. Every time I glanced at it, I grinned at the picture of the man chasing it in the wind.
I suppose he forgot all about it as his day went on. But I’ve sent him silent wishes for a happy day every day since.
Kindness is an amazing thing. Those little acts of consideration generate a happiness that just goes on and on.
Oh, and by the way, it turns out that I am fairly well in control of my spending. And I’m noticing the occasional impulses when they sneak up on me, too. I don’t always say no to them. You have to do little acts of kindness for yourself, too, after all.
Wishing you a week where the winds of kindness blow mightily and gift you with happy surprises.
