Upon completion of this mission myself, years ago, here's what I realized: "Hi" is empowering. It creates personal confidence, an aura if you will, that others sense and it becomes addictive. Positive breeds positive, as can and does its evil twin: negative. So why choose the latter? My reflection revealed to me that if I could be positive, cheerful, and engaging it set the tone for my day. In retrospect as well, odds are, it may have done the same for those I interacted with.
A simple gesture goes a long way, yet it takes so little effort. It's mystifying really to me why so many people go through a day in life with their heads down, looking away and/or avoiding eye contact with others. This mission was placed upon my alter of life by a teacher in High School. I remember at the time pondering: "What does this have to do with this subject? What a waste of time; What's this guy doing, this won't help me on my ACT, etc." After we turned in our reflection write-ups to our instructor a "ditto" was distributed (remember those blueprints we all sniffed?) to all the students in class. It was a brief passage by Charles Swindoll. It was in massive, like 48 size, font. No one in class had heard of this guy, we all assumed it must be some super important, world-altering, figure because it was United States History class. The introduction of Swindoll by our teacher was anything but spectacular. As a matter of fact, it came across in a most anti-spirited manner, sort of like the author is just an average person who's a minister in Texas; blah, blah, blah. The class read silently the "ditto." The passage read:
"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes."How wrong was I about that lesson? First of all, I was wrong about Charles Swindoll. He did turn out to be a world-altering figure. He altered and changed my life completely. I still use the power of "Hi" every day; I work each and every day on my "attitude." I was wrong about the lesson. At first, I questioned the lesson's validity and it turned out to be the one I remember the most. What I was most wrong about was questioning the teacher's guidance of the topic. This out-of-the-box, non-related textbook topic, never to be found on the ACT Test, about an unknown person taught me perhaps the greatest of lessons in US History, education, and in life.
The lesson taught me that the success of the United States is based upon the hard work of its "unknown," run-of-the-mill, average people; that's OUR History. It also taught me that teachers need to teach what will impact young adults' lives; and more times than not it won't be related to a test question on the ACT or any other high-stakes test. A Teachers' mission is to prepare young people to be positive assets to society; not just to get test questions correct. This lesson was truly a gift; the kind of gift that never stops giving. Not a day goes by in which I don't recall the power of being positive. And by the way, that "ditto" adorns the front of my classroom still, to this day. I learned that "Those that can teach, TEACH; and those that can't teach work for a living!"
