On this, the day before Christmas, I thought I’d share the story of how one little girl on a train made thousands of people smile.
A few years ago, a man was having a horrible, terrible, no-good-very-bad morning. He boarded his regular commuter train, slumped down at his usual spot, and looked out the window.
Soon enough, he noticed a little girl holding paper shopping bags board the train. From one of the bags, she pulled dozens of envelopes and – with a bright smile on her face – began to walk down the aisle, hand delivering a letter to each rider.
The passengers looked up from their phones. They escaped the trance of their laptops and their tablets.
Each took the letter she had given them, opened it … and smiled.
Eventually the girl came to the man’s seat, handed him a letter and flashed a broad smile. He tore it open, eager to learn what was inside.
The letter, decorated with red and green crayon, read:
Happy holidays!
Merry Christmas!
Your challenge this Christmas – say hello to a stranger.
-The girl from the train.
The strangers on the train set aside their phones and their tablets and began connecting with one another. They began having conversations, sharing smiles, laughing.
Friend, sometimes it seems that our hyper-connected world has disconnected our humanity.
With faces nose-down into smartphones or tablets, attention grabbed and held by that artful black mirror, people travel from place to place without ever seeing the world around them. Or the people around them.
Even when we are physically close, we can be so very far apart.
So this story of a little girl piercing that invisible barrier for dozens of train passengers is inspiring on its own.
But her story isn’t over.
Little did she know, but the man sitting at that window seat on the train – the one whose morning had gone terribly wrong and who was feeling awfully low – was a video editor for The Daily Goalcast, a site that shares messages of motivation and hope all over the world.
Inspired, he got to work on a video describing his morning on the train, and sharing her challenge with TDG’s over 2 million subscribers. The video he produced was seen tens of thousands of times, by people all over the world – including me. And its message has inspired me ever since.
A little girl, with a few crayons and some paper, set out to brighten the days of a few strangers.
She ended up inspiring tens of thousands more.
Be kind to one another.
Be kind to yourself.
And never forget that you have the power to inspire the world.
~Michele
P.S. Although typically Tuesday’s posts include action items (“small things to do” today to make tomorrow better), this is a holiday week and I know your to-do list is already overflowing. So I hope that instead, you will join me in doing something over the next week that will give us direction and motivation for the next year: Rest. Recharge. Reflect. Recommit.
I hope you’ll join me in some radical rest, in recharging your batteries, and in reflecting about where we’ve been. And I hope you’ll join me in being aspirational about where we can go – and that you’ll recommit yourself to being part of the movement that will get us there.
I am so grateful to see you here, friend. I wish you peace, and happiness, and so much joy that your heart overflows with the lightness of it all. You deserve it.
Happy holidays.
Small Deeds Done 