Small things in Life...

Was feeling a bit down partly missing my parents who left last weekend after visiting me here for a couple of months, and also stressed out cos these days I am in the process of moving to a new flat and right now my whole body is aching cos I moved most of my things to the new place last evening after work. I am also cleaning the existing flat to make it spotless... and at work my biggest project is about to be released...

Anyway on the way home after going for a walk just to clear my mind i started humming 'What a wonderful world' to myself as I was looking at the trees of green, and the lovely flowers in bloom cos it's summer, and as usual smiled at this old man walking his cute dog (there are many kindly old people here in Geneva walking all sorts of dogs and who usually smile back and say 'Bonjour!' I guess cos in this culture children grow up and leave their parents very early in life and so the parents just take a dog for company).

This time he smiled back and said "Vous chantez bien!" I was taken aback, and at first didn;t understand what he said (my French is slowly improving, but still it takes a while to understand when someone speaks fast), so I replied "Pardon?" to which he said "Vous avez une belle voix" [you have a beautiful voice!] Oh then i realised he had just heard me humming, I didn;t think anyone could have heard it... It was funny how the unexpected complement from a stranger just made me smile and brightened my day.

That;s when I started to think how the small things in life can make a difference. Sometimes we wait to do big gestures of kindness, and say I'll feed the poor when i am much richer or I'll show appreciation to my parents after I can afford to give them a house or treat my husband or wife when i have enough money to take them on a trip around Europe and so on and so on, but the fact is, it;s the little things that often matter, things that can be done here and now, not when i have more time or money... cos that day 'when I have more time or more money' never really comes cos it's always relative. It's like the sign that says 'free beers tomorrow', and tomorrow never comes! So I decided to try to be nice to people even in small ways... who knows maybe the little act of kindness you show a stranger just might brighten their day!