GREY MATTER LIFE

If there’s one thing that I’ve come to understand more clearly on my journey with this piece of shit brain tumor, it’s that you often never know what someone’s dealing with. Too often when no outward appearance of challenge, disability or emotion is evident we fail to recognize that they exist under the surface.

Finally this morning a trail of cars lined up behind me in the drive thru at Dunkin Donuts. For whatever reason, I’m always at the end of that trail of cars. So, this morning I paid for my large coffee and a sprinkle donut for Cooper and then paid the tab for the gentleman behind me. After the week I’ve had, the gesture made all the stress fade away.

The woman who works the window has been handing me my coffee for four years. She knows me and she knows my children. We see her around town and she always remembers us. When I asked her to include the tab for the car behind me to mine she smiled the largest smile I’d seen on her face and she then told Cooper that his mommy was a good person.

I explained to Cooper what I had done. I told him that it’s a good thing to do something for another person simply because you want to and not because you want anything in return or a thank you. I’m not sure he fully understood, but he listened.

The anonymity of the gesture felt great and I can only hope I made his morning brighter. Maybe he’s on a journey like me. Maybe he’s heading to play golf. Maybe he lost his wife, daughter, son or friend recently. The maybe and what ifs can go on infinitely. I’ll never know, but that’s the beauty of the gesture.

So go out and pay it forward for another person today. I challenge you. If you’ve never done it, you’d be surprised what a small gesture can mean to a total stranger and for yourself.