While I was babysitting one spring day, I took my 3 year-old little friend on a walk. As we passed a fountain, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a penny. When I handed it to him and told him to toss it into the water and make a wish he looked at me quizzically. I told him that he could wish for anything in the whole wide world and if you are lucky it will come true. He nodded as if he understood, pointed at a leaf floating the water in the middle of the fountain and said, “I wish for that leaf.” I explained again that he could wish for anything he could ever dream of and he reaffirmed, “I wish for that leaf.” In response I sighed, laughed a little and moved on with our walk.
A few weeks later I told this story to my mom. Her first question was, “Well, did you get him the leaf?” I began to argue my weak excuses for not making an effort to retrieve the leaf from the water. She politely said something about it being a shame that I was not able to get it for him and changed the subject. However, the thought that resonated with me was, “all he wanted was the leaf and you didn’t get it for him.” I think about that day frequently now. Was the leaf really that far away? Could I have reached it with a stick? With a little extra effort, I could have made his wish come true.
You can be the one to make the difference when a person’s desire is attainable. Be it digging through your purse to find a Band-Aid when someone needs one or taking the extra second to grab some change out of your wallet for a homeless person on the street, it is the little things that can make the most difference. In the time it takes to point a confused student in the right direction on campus or to offer a hand moving a box up the stairs, you can save someone else the frustration and exhaustion that comes along with his or her particular struggle. While desires are not clear in every situation, asking how someone is doing could be the answer to someone silently wishing that they had a friend to talk to. Random acts of kindness can brighten someone’s day whether the need was explicitly stated or not.
This one small encounter has shifted my way of thinking. Instead of simply dismissing the wishes of others out of laziness and selfishness, I have been trying to be more helpful. I have since adopted the mindset of retrieving the leaf from the middle of the fountain. By exerting the extra energy that it takes to look for a stick to poke at the leaf with, I can bring happiness to others. I have found myself going out of my way to do little things for other people and in turn I, too, benefit from the positive reactions of those who surround me.
