Hopes & Gestures

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March 30, 2010

Hopes & Gestures

Approaching the entrance to a well-known and popular coffee shop with my 2 children I pause for a moment and wonder if the man in front will see us and hold the door open, or fail to acknowledge us and let it close behind him. If he opens the door then it will be considered a 'gesture of goodwill'. If he lets the door close then the reverse is true and it will be considered rude and impolite.

Would you have held the door open I wonder? (I'll share at the end of the blog the outcome of my experience)

Simple 'gestures of goodwill' restore peoples faith in mankind and bring hope to the lives of others.

Chris Moyles, Gary Barlow, Fearne Cotton and many others climbed Mount Kilimanjaro last year for Red Nose Day raising £3.5 million in the process. The cause: fighting malaria in Africa, and in turn giving those people hope.

Now we may not be celebrities, however, we do have the ability to fill others with hope. We can do this through everyday simple gestures; like opening doors for others, or letting somebody out at a junction, or offering your seat to an older person on the bus. All these things and many others give people hope.

My children never cease to amaze me and over the weekend I saw Becca helping her friend get to grips with riding her bike. It's a journey most, if not all of us have been on at some point in our lives. We start off unsure and with no confidence and before we know it we're off, never to be seen again! Having spent a bit of time outside, Becca came into the house looking a little frustrated. When I asked her what was wrong this is what she said;

"I've told Rosie (her friend) that if she believes she can do it, she will. If she doesn't believe she can do it then she won't..."

Now that's giving people hope...

We don't have to be in positions of authority to give people hope. We don't actually have to be good friends with people to give them hope. In fact quite often strangers can give us hope when we least expect it.

Think about the people in your life who have given you hope. I'm sure you've got some really important people in mind.

Michael Buble captures it perfectly when he says;