Holiday Tips - How You Respond in Life's Small Moments is The Real Gift
I’m all about holiday madness but rather than a list of gifts to give to people, let me tell you a story that captures Ralph Waldo Emerson’s saying that “The only gift is a portion of thyself.” It’s a harder gift to give, but longer lasting.
We were on a beautiful downtown street of brownstones and gingko trees in New York’s Greenwich Village. My 12-year-old son dropped the green twenty-dollar bill his grandma had given him so that he would have some spending money when he went into the city. Out of nowhere someone appeared demanding that it was “his money” and getting in the face of my son, who didn’t know what to do. My husband waved the guy off, who followed us a few blocks and finally gave up.
My son was pretty shaken, but I told him, “That stuff just happens in the city, honey. It’s no big deal,” I said.
I’ll admit part of my response was based on wanting my kids to like New York City as much as I do. To like America. To have a sense of connection to a place that is theirs, even though they have never lived there.
But I was dead wrong to make excuses. We can’t always control what happens in life.
But we can control our responses.
The last 24 hours of travel have taught me that often subtle but hard lesson.
“That’s just the way we eat”, our colleague said.
We were out at a raucous local restaurant that served up South Korea’s famous fried chicken and beer. It was the fun night out after a few days of more serious conversations in conference rooms about navigating a shared future for Asia.
If you want to bring people together, often the best possible way is over food. And what a pleasure to have a great conversation over a shared meal. The group hosting seemed unprepared for the number of vegetarian dinners at that dinner with one dish of egg with ketchup on offer. When we tried to find a good solution (noodles without the meat? vegetables?), the response felt something like, “what did you expect in a fried chicken restaurant?”
In other words, similar to my own response, which diminished my son's real experience of fear, stress, and frankly the real danger of being a newbie on the city street in a country known for the most gun violence outside of a war zone.
Maybe it was no big deal. Maybe the best response is to not react and keep going. We did go out for some fabulous bingsu shaved ice to round out the meal.
But I’ve come to believe that the small moments of considered response are what lead to any chance we might have at shared global or even local futures.
One exercise with next generation leaders suggested that trust, connection, humility and a bias to action are what will allow us to succeed in navigating shared futures. But how do we reverse engineer those? The devil is in the details.
On my flight back, I was unlucky enough to sit in a middle seat between a family with too much luggage, which they were trying to cram into the overhead. Everything was a blur of white faux fur, pink Hello Kitty and diamante. I felt like I had stepped into an anime. The matriarch pulled out a huge white table fan and propped it on the arm rest to recover from her exertions.
Usually, we are the loud family with a lot of kids and luggage and sometimes a few swear words paving the way to getting our bags stuffed under seats and overhead, so I don’t begrudge anyone getting settled in their own way.
When we landed, the overhead bins opened. A pink plastic crate that had held all their extra bags was jammed on top of my suitcase and it flew out and slammed into my head. Surprised, I turned around to the woman I’d just spent four hours next to as she picked it up off the floor, looked directly in my eyes with utmost indifference and quickly turned away to talk to her daughter.
Are you on the edge of your seat waiting to hear how I told them off, demanded an apology or reported them to the stewardess. I will say that all the crazy stuff I’ve read about people screaming at each other on airplanes prevented me from saying anything.
Honestly, I was angry. I wanted to teach her a lesson in civility. If it was my kids, I would have asked them to say, “I’m sorry. Are you ok?”
I used the usual ‘Jedi mind trick’ that I teach my kids. You never know what’s happening for another person. Maybe she had just lost someone dear to her and that is why she was all out of empathy?
But that woman did make me think about our response to these types of situations.
In the end, it's not about who was right or wrong, but how we choose to respond. A considered response is a true gift to our loved ones and a broader benefit to those we don’t know.
These seemingly insignificant moments hold the key to forging a path towards shared futures. By embracing empathy, understanding, and compassion, we can reverse engineer the qualities needed for success. Let us be catalysts for positive change, one interaction at a time, and shape a more compassionate and connected world. The devil truly is in the details, and it is in those small moments that we have the opportunity to make a difference.
What intentions do you have around how to BE this winter season?
