Heartfelt Gift Notes and Random Acts of Kindness

 

 

A lot of the slippers are purchased as gifts. Often times, someone will buy a pair for themselves and love them so much that they use them as their go-to gift for many gift-giving occasions thereafter.

With these gift purchases, I’m privy to the heartfelt notes that go along with them. I get excited thinking about how touched the recipient will be when they read theirs. Before March of this year, the notes were for birthdays, anniversaries and hospital stays. Starting with the pandemic, “just thinking of you” notes started coming as well. Here are some of my favorite gift notes:

 "Belated welcome back and comfort for quarantine. Glad you are stateside again. Miss you!"

"Happy anniversary, Love! I love you more than ever! XXOO"

". . .Enjoy, my favorite friend. . .sending love with this advance b-day gift."

"Something comfy for you at the end of a long day. xo"

If I'm honest, I'm not the best gift giver. While I pride myself on my "finds" when I do give gifts, I'm usually late in sending them and I've fallen out of the habit of giving friends much more than a quick call or text on birthdays. So I especially admire these customers who are making the time and effort to send special gifts and sentiments. And now, in late 2020, when times are challenging for all of us, these customers have inspired me to up my efforts to make someone else's day. I'm working on making it a habit to perform random acts of kindness. If I bake something, I'll make extra to give to a friend or neighbor. I'll take flowers to a friend on her birthday. If I buy my daughter a small toy, I'll buy one to give to her friend. I'll leave a message for a friend I haven't talked to in ages just to say I'm thinking of them. Because little sparks of joy that people bring to me can make such an impact on my day, I know these little efforts will, at minimum, make someone smile, and at most, bring them a wave emotion because it came at just the right time on a hard day. Since doing things for other people makes us feel good ourselves, it's a win-win.  

So before the gift-giving winter season ramps up and gifts are being sent in all directions, I want to give praise to giving on occasions when gifts are not obligatory and to the small ways that we can bring joy to other people's lives just because.

 

P.S. By sheer coincidence, as I've been writing this, a friend told me that she fell off a curb today and strangers stopped their walks and others pulled their cars over to make sure she was ok - in a pandemic. Then, one of them walked her home to be sure she made it all the way.