You can’t live the perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
Apparently, a chap by the name of John Wooden said it. I’ve never met him. I’d never heard of him previously.
But so impressed was I by the power of this statement that I shared it with my Twitter followers.
I’ve found the thing about writing down things – or simply repeating them – is that it helps you remember them.
The tweet was 74 days ago.
A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend (I do that from time to time!). During the conversation, this friend told me a story from many years ago.
He’d been walking along when he came across an unkempt individual, who gave the impression of being a homeless man. But this poor chap collapsed in the street.
My friend rushed over to him, and drawing on his basic first aid training, checked for breathing and a heartbeat. Without thinking about any potential danger to himself, he began to give the collapsed chap the kiss of life, continuing to breathe air into his lungs until the paramedics arrived.
The following day, when he enquired at the hospital, my friend discovered that the chap had recovered and had discharged himself from the hospital.
He never found out who the man was. But since that day my friend has had the satisfaction of knowing that he helped someone to live. Who knows how long the chap continued to live, and what the quality of his life was. But he’d been given extra, valuable, irreplaceable time.
You can’t live the perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
I was reminded of that once again when I heard my friend’s story.
In fact, I think I may have quoted it to him.
It’s great when you do a friend a favour, knowing that your friend is likely to help you out too if you need a hand.
But there seems to be just something special about doing something for someone who could never repay you.
It makes it that perfect day.
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