Friday, December 20, 2013

Another happy day...

Today we had another Christmas Party at work. This time though it was for our clients. We have a very generous donor who allows us to order up some good food and get gifts for just about everyone. We served turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls, veggies and cake. We play games like Christmas Bingo and Musical Chairs. Everyone gets a  smile and something small to open up. It's a great day. It takes so little to make people happy, really. When you think about trying to make people happy it sometimes seems like an enormous job and one barely knows where to start. The truth is - all it takes is a smile, a simply joke or a heart felt good morning and it sets the tone for the entire day.

I have a friend who has started to do random acts of kindness on her birthday. She does one for each year she has been on earth so this year she had to come up with 40 ideas. She's very clever so it wasn't a difficult task for her. She taped plastic bags with loose change in them to vending machines outside of her local Wal-Mart. She baked three dozen cookies for each of the local firehouses in her area and she delivered them with a gallon of ice, cold milk to each one. She went to Starbucks and secretly paid for the next 5 people in line. She got gift cards from local fast food places and tucked them away in library books so the next person who picked up that book could get a free Big Mac or a large order of fries. Her list went on and on. Flowers delivered to a local nursing home to "someone who never has visitors" or 50 lbs. of dog food and a load of old clean towels delivered to the Human Shelter and the same amount of cat food to the local cat shelter. All simple ideas yet each one a guaranteed smile.

We go through life taking each shot and letting each one bring us further and further down. Today I saw for myself that a hot meal and a warm smile can go a long way to change the world.

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