STOCKHAUSEN INK
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A RANDOM ACT OF KINDNESS In recent months, our nation’s experienced anonymous giving and random acts of kindness. It’s been wonderful to hear stories about how much humanity believes in doing for others without thoughts of “what’s in it for me.” The impact of doing something for someone else presented itself to one of my students the other night. I do a series of five stand-alone evening workshops called “Writing for Fun and Profit.” The audience is usually comprised of people who want to become writers while keeping their day jobs. Attendees typically get a price break for attending all five weeks, so, of course, most of the time I see the same people at every session. As I was beginning one of the sessions, Ray, a participant, arrived and shared his disappointment at losing his briefcase full of class materials from the previous week. He told how he left the briefcase on the back of his vehicle and drove off. Of course, he didn’t realize it was gone until he got to the workshop. He called home and asked his wife to search for it on the roadside. During the break, he called home again and asked his wife is she found it. When he returned, I could see the disappointment in his face. He said she hadn’t found it and that he felt stupid. I understood how he felt because, like him and many of you I suppose, I’ve felt the same way after doing something similar. All I could do was offer to replace the handouts. I couldn’t replace the writing he’d done the week before. I couldn’t replace the notes he’d taken earlier. I couldn’t even replace that briefcase. I felt badly about the incident, but worse, I felt helpless. Although he tried to stay focused on the material I presented, it seemed he was distracted. He was the first one out the door when the workshop was over. I figured he wanted to retrace his route himself to look for what he’d lost. I headed home at the end of the evening, greeted my husband, went through the day’s mail, then finished my night time rituals. I fell into bed exhausted, never giving the lost briefcase another thought. When the alarm rang at five the next morning, I hit the snooze and tried to convince myself I should get up. Eventually I got up, finished my third cup of coffee, and was ready to head out the front door. We live in a split entry home and from the top of the stairs I glanced down to the landing to verify my shoes were there. Then I spotted it. A black briefcase, lying on the carpet, not six inches from the shoes I kicked off when I got home the night before. I hurried down the steps, picked up the briefcase, opened the zipper, and spotted my handout, with my usual contact information on it, from the week before. I put the briefcase down, raced up the stairs, stood at the entrance to our bedroom, and shouted, “Harry, Harry, tell me about the briefcase by the front door.” You can imagine he was a little startled by my shouting him awake from a restful sleep. He tried to look awake and coherent, but one eye wasn’t cooperating. “Huh? Wha?,” he responded. I lowered my voice, paced my words, and used a determined tone. “Tell me about the briefcase by the front door.” By then he was awake and getting out of bed. “I don’t know anything about it. It was here on the inside of the screen door when I got home last night. There wasn’t any note or anything with it. I just thought you were in a hurry and put it there for me to take in.” Amazed that someone would go to the effort to anonymously return a briefcase to its owner, I proceeded to tell him the story of the missing briefcase Then I remembered I had an early appointment, so I left the briefcase where it was and stepped outside to begin my day. The brisk air felt great. My step felt lighter. Two neighbors were already outside. One waved as he hauled his garbage container to the curb. The other waved as she walked her dog. Even the sky brightened as the rising sun promised a beautiful day ahead. I uttered a prayer thanking God and asking Him to send special blessings to the person who did their best to get the briefcase back where it belonged. After so many recent news stories of husbands abusing wives and children killing children in our society, I had proof there was still hope for us. Granted, it was a small thing. But it was huge to Ray. And to me. When I returned Ray’s briefcase to him, he told me the briefcase was a gift from his daughter. It was leather so he could only imagine how much it cost her. Then he told me that a couple of years ago he found a driver’s license on the floor of a store. He picked it up and, since it had the person’s name and address on it, he sent it back to them in overnight mail. “It cost me $9.00 and at the time I wondered why I even bothered. I don’t know why I had to return that license, but I did. Now I’ve been paid back and paid back with interest,” he said. Guess that goes to show that cliches sometimes are founded in truth. What goes around comes around. I don’t know who the angel was who drove eight plus miles to another town to find the one address contained in that briefcase, but I trust God will bless him or her real good. Dear person, whoever you are, thank you. Sharron Stockhausen, MMA, is an award-winning author, speaker, trainer, coach, and consultant. She owns Stockhausen Ink and is CEO of Expert Publishing, Inc. Visit her and her companies at www.stockink.com and www.expertpublishinginc.com.
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