I recently attended two events that may seem to have nothing in common, but I soon discovered differently. One was a retirement reception and the other was a celebration of life service.
The retirement reception was beautifully decorated and you could see that everyone was ready to celebrate the work accomplishments of an esteemed colleague. At the appointed time, people let the person who was retiring know how much they admired her, what specifically they admired, and how much they were going to miss working with her.
The celebration of life service wasn’t quite so joyful at first, but people started smiling in remembrance of the lost loved one as stories of his life were told, and as family and work aquaintances told how much they admired him.
Why do we wait until people are either moving on in life or leaving life to take a moment to appreciate them and publicly uplift their life’s work? Why don’t we take the time in the day to day running of life to let them know what they mean to us? Are we too busy? Are we too self-centered to notice what others are doing? Do we think that we will have another day in the future for this? Or even worse, do we just take people for granted?
I know that I am so guilty of this, and am inspired by these recent events to do a better job of letting people know how much I appreciate them in the midst of being busy with life. Won’t you join me?