In our mastermind phone meeting this morning, one of the members shared with us a story about seeds that I figure you’ll appreciate just as much as I did.

Yesterday her phone rang and when she picked it up, a voice she didn’t recognize asked if her name was Susan Minarik. When she admitted that indeed it was, the voice further asked if she had once been Susan ——- (her maiden name). Again, Susan allowed as how that was her.

“Well Susan, the reason I’m calling is that we went to high school together. My name is Mike ——-, and I just wanted to tell you my story.”

Totally unable to recall who this Mike person was, and unsure what might come next, Susan gave a noncommittal OK and waited. After all, this guy could be a newly awakened stalker from 45 years in her past, or could be carrying a decades-long secret crush, neither of which would be very welcome. So she decided to wait and simply let Mike have his say.

“I realize that you may not even remember me, but since graduating from high school, I went on to get married, have a career, and live life pretty much like everybody else. But then five years ago I got cancer. And that just wiped me out. I was devastated. It knocked me down and I couldn’t seem to get back up, no matter what I did. I went through deep depression.

“Then one day, I was looking back through my old things from school days. As I was leafing through the yearbook, I came across the place where you signed it. You wrote ‘Thank you for what you have done for our family and all the help you’ve given us.’ And I sat and began wondering whatever happened to that old Mike. Somebody who had been thanked for what he’d done.”

Meanwhile, Susan was still trying to remember who this person was that she had thanked.

“Right then and there,” Mike went on, “I decided to go back to being my old self again. Confident and thankful and looking forward to what life was going to bring.

“And I just wanted to call and thank you for writing that in my yearbook. It helped me get my life back. I started working out and running. In the past five years my wife and I have run five marathons. I still have bone cancer, and it’s still incurable, and I know that eventually it’ll get me, but I’m not going to voluntarily give it an inch. I’m going to keep living life and enjoying it as long as I have breath in me.

“So thank you Susan,” he concluded.

And that was all Mike had called to say. Just thank you. They quickly exchanged details of their respective lives in the intervening years, then Mike hung up and was gone, leaving Susan to think about the power of a simple remark she’d casually scribbled in somebody’s yearbook 45 years ago.

Now, Mike didn’t have to call her. In fact, he hadn’t even known her married name, but he did remember that 29 years earlier his mother and Susan’s father had died in the same week, so their obituaries had appeared in the same issue of the newspaper. He now lives in a different state, so going and looking up that back issue, getting her name and then searching the Internet for a way to contact her involved some effort. In other words, Mike had to go fairly far out of his way and expend some real time simply to call and say thanks. He was that grateful.

Susan briefly tells about the experience in her blog High on Happiness, but truth be told, I think she still doesn’t “get” just how many seeds she’s been planting every single day of her life. That’s just the kind of person she is.

But to you, my question is this: Do all your casual, unthinking little throwaway comments and interactions with those who have passed your way help them remember you as somebody who did something FOR them, or somebody who did something TO them?

What’s your net contribution to the lives of the people you’ve passed casually along the way? The truth is, you probably won’t ever know because people are enormously unlikely to call you up 45 years later just to tell you what effect you’ve had.

You won’t know, but you could venture a guess, based on your overriding attitude to the passersby through your life. Do you wish for them the very best that life can possibly bring them? Do you hope that they have lives of joy, fulfillment, love and happiness? Do you wish these things for no reason except that it feels good to do so? If you do, then you’re probably leaving gentle and kind remarks of goodwill for others.

But if not, if you often find yourself jealously begrudging others the good things, wishing it was you and not them enjoying good fortune, hoping the guy in front of you will fall and get the hell out of your way, seeing no one around you but fools, dunces and idiots, then you can rest assured you’ve spent your years so far planting thorns and not flowers.

The scriptures say, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” so whatever is abundant in your heart is what passes through your lips and lodges in the hearts and spirits of others. Whether you’re even aware of it happening.

These are the seeds you’ve been strewing about as you you’ve passed along the paths life has laid in front of you.

And why should you even care? I mean, if nobody is ever going to call you up and let you know anyway, what’s the use of bothering with it?

Frankly, if you have to ask for this to be explained to you, then no explanation ever invented will help you understand. The simplest I can put it is this – you do it because it feels good doing it. Only that. And that’s enough.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles