I had a work related meeting to attend this afternoon. I had to arrive at the venue at 1 o’clock, but I arrived about 40 minutes before the scheduled time. So I was waiting on the roadside a few steps from the venue to kill any extra time I had. Punctuality is no longer what it was a few decades ago. Arriving late and early are considered equally bad because arriving somewhere early is considered a sign that you have nothing good to do with your time. In order not to create a bad first impression, I decided to arrive at the place at the exact time.
As I watched the people go by, I got lost in thought about some of the previous gatherings of this kind that hadn’t turned out as fruitful as I had hoped. It goes without saying that such thoughts always seem to consume a piece of positivity in you. After just 10 minutes of thinking, I was left with the idea that today’s meeting was not going to produce anything. I started to feel less and less safe with each passing moment.
I instinctively looked to my right and noticed that a little schoolgirl of about 7-8 years old was standing next to me, probably waiting for the bus or something. She seemed concerned and puzzled, but I ignored her and started looking at the building that I was supposed to enter in about 25 minutes. Suddenly I felt someone touch my hand. I turned to find the girl looking at me. I gestured with my eyebrows “What?” She said, “Do you see anything here?” and she pointed to the left of her. I could only see the side of her school bag and found that a water bottle was tucked into her side pocket.
I thought he wanted me to give him the water bottle because he didn’t want to take the bag off his shoulders. I took out that bottle and tried to give it to him. She said, “No, not this. Look here.” pointing towards her left shoulder. I looked closely and couldn’t help but smile after seeing that a bird had apparently pooped on her shoulder. A bit embarrassed to see me smile, she said, “Okay, pour him some water from my bottle.” I popped the cap off the bottle and did exactly what I was told.
He obviously didn’t clean his shirt. Her expression became more serious and she said, “How would I clean it?” I asked her if she had a paper to which she replied in the negative. I said, “Why don’t you tear out one of your notebooks?” She changed her expression to even more concerned, if that was possible and she said, “The teacher will get mad and she will yell at me if I do something like that.” I quickly looked away because she was literally laughing at me at the time.
Then I saw an empty box of some medicine lying on the ground in front of a medical store. I picked it up and tore off a piece of hard paper. He eyed the piece hopefully and turned his side toward me so I could clean his shoulder. I cleaned the droppings off his shoulder with it and when I was satisfied that it couldn’t be cleaned any more, I threw the piece away. He looked at his shoulder and turned to go into an alley. He walked a few steps and almost ran up to me, stopped and said, “Thank you.” I nodded to welcome his expression of gratitude. She smiled weakly at me and started walking back to the alley. I kept looking at her until she put a woman in her path, probably her mother, took her hand and started walking again. For a minute, I was reminded of a similar incident that happened to me when I was at school. I looked at the time, I still had 15 minutes left.
I suddenly felt so cute and carefree that without further thought I went ahead and entered the building. The meeting went pretty smoothly and I felt in control of every moment while I was there. After the meeting, I took the bus back home. It took me 90 minutes to get home and every moment during that time, I had nothing but happy thoughts in my mind.
Today I realized that no matter how much negativity one feels inside, just a little bit of innocence can make it all go away. In fact, the reason for all kinds of complications and worries in our life is that we lack that innocence and truthfulness. Only if we can find a way to keep innocence alive in ourselves and the people around us, we will never be unhappy. I still don’t know if I’ll get anything good out of today’s meeting, but I still don’t care. I will never forget how one girl unknowingly affected my outlook forever.