Secret Agent (Wo)Man

No act of kindness no matter how small is ever wasted. Aesop

I now have that song running through my head. I'm sorry are you asking what song?! Haven't you heard this? Okay now that we've got that out of the way... :)

Today wraps up a week at YLSC of Gratitude and Secret Gratitude Agents. It has been such a fun week - full of secrets and creativity and covert ops. :) Being the Front Desk means my co-worker and I get to participate in a lot of the fun of the covert ops and we get to see a lot of what people are getting as their secret agent shows them some gratitude. It has been a huge hit - I'm campaigning for it to be an annual thing!
This week I have seen some "small" acts of kindness take people and their spirits a long way. We all need a show of kindness and gratitude. It's my soapbox - *you* may think it is "small" and not worth doing/saying/etc but small to you may be HUGE to someone else. And no small thing is ever wasted. They all add up together to make maximum impact. I've watched it happen this week. Everyone has been boosted by people getting loved on and shown some appreciation - it hasn't been limited to just the recipient. Somehow, someway everyone benefits when acts of kindness and gratitude are being done.

Comments

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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