The other day, I read this blog post called You Give What you Get and Get What You Give at mommythisandthat.com and it really resonated with me. Because I work with kids, I see a lot of selfish attitudes all day long. This is in part because their teenagers, but also, the kids I work with have such challenging lives that they tend to hold on to whatever and whomever they can and never let go. They very rarely, if ever do something nice for somebody else, and if they do, it’s with because they’re thinking “What’s in it for me?”
Now I’ll be the first to admit that my students take this attitude to the extreme, but the I started thinking about myself and other people. There aren’t too many people out there who do things for people strictly for the sake of doing it. It’s kind of a shame really, because the feeling you get when you do something for somebody “just because” is the most amazing feeling.
I don’t have a lot in my life. We don’t have a lot of money, or a lot of things, and God knows being a single parent of two teenagers, I don’t have a lot of time, but from now on, I’m going to try and do something for somebody once a day at a minimum, just because.
