Thursday Thoughts: A Priceless Gift

Years ago, a wonderful man gave me a priceless gift, one that took me years to recognize and use, however.

He was easily the friendliest person I’d ever known. No matter where we were — restaurant, amusement park, clothing store — he’d be making people happy that he was there.

How?

By talking with them. Really talking. (He used to jokingly say he’d talk to a fence post if it would talk back.) I don’t mean talking with other customers, although he’d do that too. No, I mean those folks whom we almost never see the way Bob did.

As people. Real people. People with lives beyond the boundaries we set for them. He’d talk to the clerks, the servers, the receptionists — the too-often-unseen-as-real-people people. The people we label and largely ignore, except when they are performing the task we expect of them.

Bob had the gift of looking beyond the labels of server, receptionist, clerk. He saw the real humans behind the badges, and he spoke to them as such. Nothing big or grand, just mild conversation. But he would smile, he would look them in the eye, and he would comment on something other than what he’d come there for. Something they could both relate to. So for a moment they connected on a personal level, as though they were friends. I was amazed.