(image via lekowicz.com)
Gooooooooood Morning SuperForest!
I’d like to share with you a moment from my life. This is a moment that I come back to in my mind quite often, as it was pivotal in my becoming SuperForester Jackson and the creation of SuperForest itself.
It all began with a trip to the movies…
I was a younger man when this story takes place. Perhaps twenty three? Twenty four? My actual age is not so important. What is important to know is that at this young age I was struggling mightily with Big Questions.
Who was I? What did I love? What did I care about? What did I want to do with my life?
These were the big questions I was asking myself. I was young and frustrated that the answers weren’t coming as fast as I’d have liked, but that is the way of being a young man. I was not as patient then as I am now. Lol. Ahhhhh, to reflect…
So, one fine evening found me at the cinema with my brother and father.
Before the movie started, my father and I went into the bathroom to “empty the tanks.” We did our business, and both went to the sink to wash up. I washed my hands and dried them and then stood by to wait for my pops to finish up. The bathroom was empty. It was just him and I. Me standing near the door, him at the sink.
It is what he did next that has stayed with me through all these years.
He washed his hands, first the left one and then the right. And then, before he reached for a towel, he took his hands and wiped down the entire sink area. There were probably five or six sinks in a row, and he took a few steps in each direction to make sure he wiped down the entire basin, sweeping the pooled water down into the drains. There were a few sodden paper towels laying on the sink and these he used to increase his wiping power, sweeping excess water from every square inch of the sink. Finally, he tossed the used towel in the trash, gave his hands one more rinse, and reached for a fresh set of paper towels.
He then dried his hands and used his towels to dry the entire sink area.
It hadn’t taken but an extra minute of his time, and when my pops stepped away from the sink it was immaculate. Sparkling. Perfect. You would have happily given a baby a bath in the sink.
With this tiny bit of effort, he escorted the sink from nasty to lovely.
I stood there and watched. He turned to me and said something. What he said to me has been lost to the haze of memory, but it was something like: “that was easy.” or “doesn’t that look nice?” or “all better.”
Or maybe he didn’t say anything at all and just smiled at me as we left the bathroom. Maybe I made up this conversation because that’s what I had been thinking to myself.
At any rate, we both washed our hands and dried them and would leave the bathroom, but he was leaving the bathroom a far nicer place than I. He was leaving it nice as a gift to the future person who would step to the sink. I had simply done what any other person would have done, trashed the place a little and left the mess for some imagined janitor to deal with. My pops looked at the sink and saw an opportunity to make the world a better place, which he did with ease and style.
I was a confused young man, angrier then. I was looking high and low for answers as to who I was and what rang of truth to me. This simple act that my father performed rang of truth. This was true and good. To perform an act of service with no thought of thanks or expectation of energetic return, simply because it was in his power, and he had the time.
Would he have cleaned the sink if I hadn’t been there? Would he have done it if he had been alone in the men’s room? I can only conject.
My father was never the type to sit me down and hand down life lessons. This frustrated my young self at times because I craved structure and guidance. I wanted him to sit me down and hand down life lessons. Instead my father was content to simply be his simple, good self, and let me grow and become whatever it was I was to become. This was a lesson that was not lost.
I cannot say that that was the day everything changed, for I still had much growing and becoming left to do. But on that day a seed was planted in the garden of my mind. The smile on my father’s face as he performed and completed this act of service was the lesson. He had found an opportunity to be happy, and seized on it.
Several years later I cobbled together what would become SuperForest, this very site, dedicated to bringing together souls who felt the same way. That acts of service and giving make one happy.
I can tell you that since that day I have become a wiper-downer of sinks in public places. I will now happily take the extra few moments to make a public area sparkle when the opportunity presents itself. Or hold the door for strangers. Or pick up things that others have dropped and hand it back to them. Or carry a baby and stroller up the subway steps as a grateful mom follows behind.
The lesson was not lost.
Upon further reflection, I found that there were many of these lessons sprinkled through our shared history. All had been delivered in such a casual manner. Since the lessons hadn’t taken the form of the usual “let’s sit down son and have a talk about what it means to be a gentleman” talk, I had missed a lot of them. I had missed most of them.
My father was simply content to BE a gentleman in all the ways that he could and let his very BEing serve as the lesson. How profound! How stupidly simple! How somewhere in between!
Had he always been this way? Was it that easy for him? Or was it something that like me, he had learned and was always working on? Was he always looking for ways to improve his own life by improving the lives of those around him, even if those around him had no idea that he was working on their behalf?
Seems so.
That moment of sink cleaning changed the trajectory of my life, and pinged me onto the path that would lead me to the SuperForest, and the Humanifesto.
Thank you, Daddoo for the lesson. And for every lesson. Thank you for being you. Profound and simple. Casual and mind-blowingly significant. Thank you.
All my love to you SuperForesters SuperForesting everywhere. I love you. You’re doing perfectly.
Yours,
SFJ
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