Pessimism fails to take single, special day

Sometimes a day literally dawns on you. It’s as if the day offered an unusual Cracker Jacks surprise perhaps you didn’t deserve, certainly didn’t expect. But there it was, a typical day that unfolded for you in ways you’re pleasantly pondering almost a week later.

As always, you began the morning pessimistically scouring the newspaper, reckoning you would indeed read about more greed in some mutual fund companies, about more financial finagling in much of corporate America, about more frivolous lawsuits, about more scams, about more fraudulent claims, about more pilfering. In general, about more takers than givers. And that’s not even including the political news of the day.

The morning rang with the cynical words of some quotable from the 17th century who reportedly said, “The human being is the weakest reed in the world; but it is a reed that thinks.” Thinks about himself, or herself, is the message we read about the reed.

So, the day began as ordinary. Not one of those Kellogg’s mornings when “Zippity-Do-Da” is the resounding lyric of every bluebird. But just a day when the November weather was bleak but tolerable and the mood fit: not sunny, not dark, merely gray.

A previous commitment plopped us into a scenario that shattered the mood, brightened the day as in July, and altered opinions about takers and givers.

There we were, seated at a kitchen table extended by leaves, in a lovely country home warmed even more by personalities than by the cookstove. Here was a family of givers, serving muffins, eggs, sausage and hospitality to several other givers who were there to work for a hospital benefit.

Not only did the family provide breakfast, they offered acres of Christmas trees from which the group could harvest dozens of trees for an upcoming event. It is the same family who for years opened their fields for strawberry picking – and always have opened their hearts to community through their volunteer spirit and generosity.

And on that ordinary, midweek day when others may have been cheating and fleecing and lying and conniving and stealing and hurting, these others opened our eyes – shut too often – to the realization there are a lot of awful good folks out there.

They are unselfishly giving of themselves in churches, in service clubs, in communities, in politics, in businesses and in uniform and not. They are everywhere yet not always seen because of no spotlight. We may not even recognize – or know – them.

We usually read only about the “takers,” about contemporary culprits, not about those everyday “givers” of their time and labors who are indeed the Cracker Jacks prizes we can discover anytime we truly look.

That particular morning after joining hands for a vigorous workout, we parted and drove back to jobs or to homes with a revived view – and a quote from Goethe: “Nothing is worth more than this day.”