Back in college, our org moderator put up a challenge – we were supposed to do a number of random acts of kindness within a certain span of time. I don’t remember the specifics, but notes were part of the assignment. Signed notes of appreciation for friends and family were simple and common enough. The other part of the assignment – anonymous notes of kindness – was something I had not thought about before.
I had my first chance one afternoon when I dropped by our newsmagazine’s office. My editor-in-chief was in a bad mood over something I’ve also already forgotten by now (hey, gimme a break, that was seven years ago), and after she skulked off to her next class, I ripped off a piece of my notepaper and, in my best-disguised handwriting, scribbled a note to cheer her up. I did not sign the note, folded it, wrote her name outside, and tacked it to our corkboard before running off to my own class. Later that afternoon when I ducked back into the office, I caught her leaving, a smile on her face, her black aura earlier all but gone. I walked in and saw that my note was gone from the corkboard but in its place, another folded sheet of paper with my name written on the outside. It was a note written by my EIC for me, saying that she knew that the note could only have come from me and thanking me for the kind gesture which really made her day. Reading that made my day.
When I discovered how happy it made me to see others happy because of me, I got hooked. This is the reason why I always make it a point to organize or prepare something special for my loved ones on special occasions. Why I painstakingly wrote and designed, by hand, personal Christmas and birthday and valentines notes for each of my college classmates. Why I made birthday blogs for my office friends. Why I taught myself how to create videos so I could make some for birthdays and despedidas. Why I don’t mind spending a considerable amount of time and effort in executing surprises for my dearest ones. They’re usually amazed that I do all that for them. What they don’t realize is that I’m doing this for my own happiness as much as theirs. This was exactly Chandler’s point in that Friends episode when he made a bet with Phoebe that there was no such thing as a truly unselfish act.
This must be one of the things missing from my life right now, why I feel empty even though I have every reason to be happy. Great work on the gap analysis, huh? Now it’s time to work on the next action steps! Stay tuned.