I’m a big fan of gratitude.
It’s something I do each day, and something I encourage my child to do.
The other day, we flew to the UK to attend an event in London. The plan was to fly in, do the hop on, hop off bus tour, go to the event and then spend the next day at London zoo before flying home.
The best laid plans
I like being organised.
The dogs were at the kennels.
My bag was packed and the alarm was set to 8.30.
A quick shower and we were off. It’s around 2 hours to get to Dublin airport from where we live, and we had to park the car too.
We had printed our boarding passes the night before, so headed straight to security.
Then a funny thing happened.
I looked at the departures board.
It said our flight was boarding. Whhhaaaattttt?
I looked at the time. It was 11am, and our flight was 11.20. Shhhiiiiiittttttttttt!
If you’ve met me in real life, you know I’m what some people politely call curvy, but this curvy girl had to get from one end of Dublin airport to the other, and it’s not a small airport.
Needless to say, when we got to our gate it was to see our play leaving the gate.
We missed it.
1st act of kindness
The first act of kindness that day was the lady by the desk.
I apologised profusely, knew it was my fault and apologised to my son.
Then something happened. This lady took pity on me and my son and put us on the next flight. I’m not sure if she should or what the protocol was, but this was my fault and she helped us out big time, and didn’t charge us at all.
The next flight was in 2 hours, so we didn’t lose much time at all.
2nd act of kindness
The second act of that day was when we got on the plane.
The steward could see the my son and I were seated away from each other, and so he checked his seating plan to see what seats were free. He then told us to go to a different aisle where we could sit together.
A small act of kindness, but appreciated none the less.
3rd act of kindness
We were on the plane yay!
However, as we headed to the taxiing area, our plane developed a fault. We had to go back to the stand and wait for an engineer.
It took a wee while, so then the cabin crew went round and gave everyone a nice cuppa whilst we wait. It’s probably some EU regulation, but at that time, the cuppa was most welcome, and an act of kindness that I really appreciated.
In that day, we were grateful for all the kindnesses we were afforded.
They didn’t cost the airline more that a cup of tea, but it made what could have been a disaster into something else.
Small acts of kindness don’t have to cost much, but they can make a massive difference to the people receiving them.
Developing your own gratitude practice
I practice gratitude everyday and have recently updated my first gratitude journal so that it includes colouring pages too.
I love how it’s turned out, and I hope you love it too.
If you’d like your own copy, or want one as a gift, then just click on the image to visit the journals Amazon page.
