It’s World Kindness Week and I have been having a blast toggling between substitute teaching and author visits at some local Career Fairs. Lots of time with kids has left my bucket overflowing!
I was excited to be able to showcase the Spanish version of Keys; these students were looking at all of our replica keys and trying to find a match to the keys on our cover.
Everywhere I go, these tiny treasures continue to be the biggest hit. Yesterday, a conversation with a third-grade boy went like this: Do these keys open anything? he asked curiously. Hearts, I reply without skipping a beat. Oh yeah, he nodded knowingly, you did say it was a kindness key.
This young lady wanted to know more about the missing key. You see, she’d read our story with her school counselor and they discussed the key behind Mr. Quigley’s knee in the mural. I explained that it’s up to every reader to decide which trait was on that key, so she told me she thought either heart or respect. I affirmed her choices and told her that I think it might have been compassion or patience and she agreed that those would work, too.
One student wanted to know if I liked my job, so I said yes before turning the tables on him by asking him what he thought the best part of my job was. His answer? Making. People. Happy.
Spot on, little buddy, spot on. Oh, how I love to make people happy. But not just the temporary kind of happiness that might come from eating an ice cream cone. No, that’s lovely and all, but I want to help people feel JOY (one of our keys to connection!) deep down in their souls, to their very core. I do that by lighting up for people, by delighting in their presence, and by getting curious about who they are, what they want or need, what they dream about, what they’re going through. What their sorrows and successes are. Where they’ve been and where they’re going. Not in a fake, glossy sort of way, but wholeheartedly with them, unwrapping the present together. Good or bad, comfortable or uncomfortable. It’s my calling and it’s a gift of epic abundance. It’s the legacy I plan to leave in the people whose paths I’m blessed to cross.
So as we close in on Thanks {and} Giving 2023, my question is this: How do YOU share your joy in such a way that it makes people happy?
Tell us in the comments or drop me a line; I always loving hearing from my readers.
Barbara Gruener 