I wanted to post a quick blog about an experience I just had. I’m from a small town in West Texas. it’s a really special place with alot of really special people. If you read down in my blog entries you’ll see that I visited there last year and it was a heartfelt trip for me, seeing old friends and old places. I’ve been able to stay in touch with some of the folks from my hometown with the help of Facebook and it’s been a really nice experience over the past few years.
I’m coming off a 12 hour shift of seeing psychiatric patients and I opened my Facebook page and a lady named Carol had left me a brief message. It said, “I love you David!! You make me happy!” This may sound like an everyday experience to most people and there are times that I get nice messages from people and on a daily basis, my kids tell me that they love me. It’s a habit that I’ve gotten them into and a habit that I got from my parents.
Let me tell you why it was such a pleasant experience. I haven’t seen Carol in more than 20 years. She was a teacher in my hometown. I’ve had brief contacts with her on Facebook along with a few dozen other wonderful people from my hometown. Tonight, I’ve been cursed at, threatened, hung up on, and listened to about a dozen extremely sad stories of abuse and neglect and drug and alcohol addiction. It was just a regular night for me. As my wife will tell anyone, I’m emotionally drained when I get home. I don’t bring home the negative emotions from work. It rolls off my back with ease after all these years I’ve been doing this type of work (and even more difficult work than this in the past).
Very rarely do I get to end a night with such a nice message from someone- from a teacher from my past. Carol reminded me to put in an extra effort to end what may seem like a typical (and maybe stressful) day for the people around me with the simplest of gestures. Thanks for the lesson. I love you too Carol.
