Beyond romantic love, there are so many ways to express loving kindness, compassion or appreciation.
So today I just wanted to share with you a story I heard recently that demonstrates how a gift of loving recognition kept on giving throughout the years.
A teacher recognized there were escalating patterns of self-doubt and self-judgment causing problems in her classroom. On a day when turbulent feelings were running high, she gave an assignment to her 30 students. She handed out a sheet of paper with the names of each of the students in the class. She gave them 15 minutes and asked that beside each name they write down something good or something that they admired about that person.
Some months later when the class was having another difficult day, she stopped what they were doing and said “I have something to hand out to you”. She had taken the pages the students had written previously and cut them apart. Then she had pasted under each student’s name the comments of admiration and goodness that had been written about them by their fellow classmates.
Several years after that, she received a sad call from the mother of one of her students. After graduating high school, this student had enlisted in the army and was subsequently killed overseas. His mother asked if his favorite teacher would come to the funeral.
At the end of the ceremony to honor his life, his mother came up to the teacher and said: “my son had very few things on him when they found his body, but this was in his pocket”. She took out the piece of paper with the 30 things written by his high school class mates. It had obviously been folded and re-folded many times. A young woman – a former student of the teacher – standing nearby said “oh yes! I carry mine too!” and pulled it out of her wallet. And another young man said: “I made it part of my wedding vows.”
I know the power of this story personally.
Some years back, I too gave a similar assignment to my students at the conclusion of a 3-month intensive course. In my variation of this exercise, I had the course participants share their comments aloud in an interactive class so all of us could witness their appreciative insights.
The feedback I got from many of the participants was that this exercise was one of the highlights of the course => to both honor the people they had come to know in this context and to receive the recognition that honored their own value and admirable qualities.
To be witnessed is a beautiful blessing. When who we truly are is seen and appreciated, it can transform our lives.
May we all treasure the moments when we are acknowledged in this way.
May we all find ways to practice this expression of kindness and love in action whenever we can.
Appreciating you,
Max
