Nearly every day as I am walking back from leaving Adam at his school, I pass a young lady heading to the college that’s just past it.
The first time I passed her, I admired her head-scarf, in my mind, which was just beautiful. I realized I was staring as she came towards me as she glared, I’m sure expecting censure, obviously not being Christian and proud of it in this oh so Christian country. We both had headsets in so I didn’t speak, but I smiled at her and probably blushed a bit for being caught staring. She smiled back and visibly relaxed.
Every time I see her now we smile at each other. And mouth ‘good morning’, since we both are still listening to music.
I hope some day to see her around our little part of Belfast when she isn’t in a hurry to get to school and I’m not already thinking of what I have to do for the rest of the day. Because I want to say “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable that first time. I really was just admiring your gorgeous head-scarf. All of your head-scarves are gorgeous, actually.”
So before you get your back up by someone staring at you, try smiling. And if something attracts your attention on someone, smile.
Make a connection.
Like this very much. Especially at the moment with so much tension going on (well, there is always tension but today it seems particularly bad). I had a similar moment last week. Was at the supermarket in a pretty bad mood. Was standing at the checkout and watched the checkout guy interact with the customer in front of me. Sainsburys near me tends to employ a lot of people who I think are probably special needs (is that the right terminology these days?). Anyway, the guy asked the customer how her day had been and she sorted of grunted at him back. I felt really bad for him as he was just trying to be nice. So when it came to my turn and he asked me, I said a white lie and said it had been pretty good. Then I asked him how his day had been and he said ‘Fantastic!’ with the biggest grin on his face, like no one ever asked him that question. We then continued to chat and he told me that I couldn’t possibly be buying nappies because I didn’t look old enough to have kids (flattery gets you everywhere). I came away with a huge smile on my face and now we always say hello and have a chat. A bit of positivity can go a long, long way. Hope you get the chance to say to your morning friend what you’d like to say.
What a lovely blog post, really enjoyed your posts and had admired the School Gate Style blog logo also which I now know you designed! Hopefully I will get a chance to chat to you someday instead of just smiling on way past or sheltering my face from the wind/rain!
Thanks! For the comment on the blog and that you like SGS’ logo. Tell your friends I’m for hire. 😀
Actually in work we’re looking for freelance graphic designers for publications we constantly need and branding for new projects, would the leyser email address here be the best to contact you about that? 🙂
Actually, use my company one: robyn @ designedtoatee.co.uk no spaces, obviously.
You can look at my work at http://www.designedtoatee.co.uk, if you want as well.
Great counsel:) And based on your exchanges with Lippitude, one never know when one is networking!!!!!!!!!!!!