Bigger and Better

In the middle of my Marie Kondo method of sparking joy, there was a timid knock on my front door. The sun had long since set, and there stood, a thin, young boy, all alone, with a large orange, marbled beach ball in his hands, as if he was gifting it to me.  He couldn't have been much older than 8 or 9.

"Hello, ma'am.  I'm playing a game of bigger and better and I have this orange ball and was wondering if you had something bigger or better than this?"

"Come in, I can probably find something."  He stepped inside and I called down to Shelbie who was knee deep in basement items that did not spark joy, and said, "Shelbs, there is a young man here looking for something bigger and better than an orange ball.  Do you have anything worthy of trade down there?"

She came up from the basement with a brand new, never been used set of Skull Candy Headphones.  She had been given them during one of her stays at Huntsman's, by some volunteers.  We handed them to the boy and said, "Are these bigger and better?"

There are some things in life I wish I could preserve, bottle up and leave on my shelf for days when I need a little reserve of joy.  That little boy's face lit up like I have never seen a face light up before.  Pure joy.  I'm not sure what he was expecting but I'm certain it wasn't a brand new pair of Skull Candy headphones.

That was one of my favorite moments last week and somewhere in it all is a life lesson on how we treat each other.  Wouldn't life be grand if every day was a bigger and better game and we left everyone we rub shoulders with in a day, bigger and better than we found them?  What if the way we acknowledged them, witnessed their story, cared about them, loved them...far exceeded their expectations?  What if the simple question...how are you, meant we really did care how they were and stopped to listen and love them even more, regardless of how their story ends?

I find myself imagining that little boy and his happy face that the world was kind to him.