To be impulsive is to be fully alive.
~Marty Rubin
On my weekly run to the bank, I had just made some deposits and withdrawn funds. As I moved down the counter to organize my paperwork, the woman behind me stepped up to the teller. I could see that she slid over a withdrawal slip. Then I heard the teller refuse her request for cash, saying her account was overdrawn.
The woman let out an anguished cry, and several customers turned to see where it came from. I looked more closely. She was a small, dark-haired woman, dressed in respectable old clothes. Involuntarily, her hand went to her mouth, and her voice broke. She wailed with a thick accent, “What am I going to do?”
The words reverberated through me, triggering a discomfiting memory. Before my current, well-paying work, in the not-too-distant past I had asked myself the same question. How would I meet the coming month’s rent? How would I have enough for food? How soon would the electricity be cut off?
Without thinking, I did something I never did before or since. I reached almost automatically into the cash envelope I’d just received, took a step closer to her, and held out a hundred-dollar bill. She stared at me, unbelieving. Then she looked suspicious. “Qué?”
I smiled and extended the bill closer to her.
“Please,” I said. She looked at me, her eyes tearing.
Other people in line stared and murmured. A couple shook their heads, unbelieving. I heard murmurs of “Wow!” and “Wonderful!” One man said loudly, “Hey, as long as you’re giving it out . . .” A few giggled.
Their comments didn’t interfere with my focus on the woman. My hand still held out the bill. “Please,” I said, “take it.”
She started to say something — perhaps a refusal at such a miracle — but my insistence changed her mind. She took the money.
Her face glowed as if she’d seen a saint. Crying, she hugged me and exclaimed, “Madre de Dios, bless you!” As she turned and left, still crying, she kept glancing back at me.
Some of the other people continued staring at me. I kept my eyes down, wanting to cherish the moment.
I can’t report that this act — which surprised me as much as it did the woman — had any direct or immediate consequences for me, like those we read about. I didn’t receive a check for quadruple that amount in the next day’s mail, a surprise gift of an expensive piece of jewelry, or a registered letter of an inheritance from a third cousin.
But what I gained was much more important.
I carry the image of the woman’s face and hear her blessing. We never even exchanged names, but the memory continues to warm me.
I never missed the money, but I felt certain it met the woman’s immediate urgent need.
My spontaneity, as I reflect now, must have come from a profound empathy, feeling another’s complete dismay in a situation that instantly called up similar ones of my own. Now, every time I am tempted to get sucked into that money-worry vortex, I remember this experience. The woman in the bank didn’t know it, but she gave me a precious lesson: Just as she was provided for, so, if ever needed, will I be.
My lingering memory of this incident has taught me more: Whatever we are impelled to give — whether it is money, a smile, a hand, a suggestion, or a few minutes of undivided attention — we should. Yes, the receiver gains what is needed. But, as givers, we gain incalculably from our spontaneous acts of kindness from the heart.
~Noelle Sterne
