Thursday, 29 November 2012

Take Time to Celebrate the Goodness in the World


Sometimes it’s nice to step back from the rush of day-to-day business and take a minute to appreciate some of the happier things in life.  The news is filled with scandalous affairs, geopolitical tensions, imminent financial doom and so much other negativity that sometimes it’s nice to observe the happier things that life sometimes bestows upon us.

Two such incidents happened to me recently that I’d like to use this platform to share:

First, a few weeks ago my aunt and uncle vacationed in Florida, driving down the Atlantic coast for two days.  When they arrived, my aunt realized that she had lost her purse.  It contained her wallet, cell phone and other personal items.  They scrambled to think about where she could have lost it and when she phoned the McDonald’s in South Carolina where they had stopped for lunch she was relieved to learn that her purse had been turned in earlier that afternoon.  The young man on the phone offered to take it to the local UPS store, package it up and ship it to her.  She gratefully accepted and the next day she received her purse with its contents entirely untouched.  The only thing it cost her was the overnight shipping, which she gladly paid.

McDonald's:  You Get a McTwoThumbsUp!


I found myself in an eerily similar situation just last week:  I traveled down to Atlanta on a business trip and, on arriving at the airport on the way home, realized that I didn’t know where my passport was.  What worried me was that I didn’t remember seeing it at all during my three day trip.  Luckily, I had my Nexus card, which allowed me to get through the border and back into Canada without my passport, but I’d heard horror stories about lost passports and didn’t look forward to sorting through that process.  As I sat on the plane thinking about my lost passport I remembered the missed call I had on my cell phone the previous day … and the message that I had not checked so far … When we landed I checked my messages to hear that my passport had been turned in to the Lost & Found at the Atlanta International Airport—the airport I had left only a couple of hours earlier!  (Note to self: do a better job of checking voicemail messages!)  I called the Atlanta airport and arranged to have my passport couriered back to me with my only cost being the courier fee.

These two separate incidents show how much good there still is in the world.  My passport could have been thrown in the garbage or worse, used for more sinister means.  My aunt’s purse could have been rummaged through and her identity and valuables stolen.  But in these two cases the good nature of two complete strangers shone through.  It’s nice to celebrate the goodness that does exist in the world, even though it seems like the mainstream media (CNN, Fox News and TMZ: are you listening?) chooses to glorify the negative, evil and depressing events in the world.

To the kind sole who found my passport and turned it into Lost & Found: thank you for your kind act and for making the world a better place.


Steve Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications Inc.

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