Many of you have a gift for expressing something fundamentally right through a story or phrase that I know will stick with me. It's an idea we'd cooked up just before Christmas and the holiday season. Because we think those stories of people who go to a restaurant and drop a massive tip for the server are awesome. We also recognize that not everyone has the means to do that. So we wanted to make it possible for more people to be disproportionately generous, even if just for a day.
The whole thing was done on the honor system. Listeners decided to whom they wished to give the card. While we asked nothing in return, we received back many wonderful notes from people who'd enjoyed the experience. You'll see some of those notes at the bottom of this post. By the way, you can join the GoodTurnsTeam to be part of future giveaways like this. Go here to sign up. The message came from Patricia in Naperville, Illinois. Just before the holidays, she was trying to fly out of Chicago's Midway Airport to visit her family for the first time in three years.
But Patricia was caught in the snarl of travel difficulties that grounded so many planes this holiday season. Her flight was canceled. Patricia was devastated, and found a cab to begin the lonely ride home. But during the drive, things began to change.
Here is how she describes the experience:. We had a real conversation. But I insisted and told him that our conversation was a gift to me.
I felt connected and not the least bit lonely. So it's striking when suddenly someone 'sees' you, and you see them. See the human first, not the customer or the worker. It has a chapter discussing "real" and "deal" friends. The author's point is that "deal" friends are "transactional," and suggests we ought to spend time cultivating more "real" friends.
