A Badly-Worded Question, and a Lesson Learned
Posted by nathan on 12 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: my life., thoughts on life.
Several years ago, I filled in as a greeter at New Hope. I stood by the entrance to the Sanctuary, shook people’s hand and handed them a bulletin.
I greeted each person by a cordial ‘How are you today?’
About the fourth guy I asked that question to, well, he told me. This old guy–I would guess 80-85, proceeded to tell me how he was doing today. He told me about his morning. He told me about his breakfast. He told me about his home health care nurse and the students from DeKalb’s HOE class. He told me about his daughter. He told me about the large callus on the bottom of his feet which he talked a nurse into holding a belt sander in place while he used the sander to wear off the callus. He went on and on for about ten minutes–I’m not exaggerating.
I learned my lesson, and I started greeting people with a cordial, ‘It’s great to see you here today’ instead.
I think we often say things which we don’t really mean. We know what we mean, but the words which are coming out of our mouth aren’t actually what we meant. Sometimes we get stuck in our words accidentally. When this happens, it’s much more simple to admit an error and move on than pile excuse after excuse, ‘well, what i meant was…’ Instead, take responsibility. Acknowledge you messed up (I mess up a lot!), and learn your lesson. Learning your lesson sooner rather than later is certainly a good thing.
This comes today after I learned a good lesson this week, after about five years of NOT learning my lesson! Don’t be like me–learn quickly!
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