Category: helping others

Home Bliss Home

I’d been feeling a full blown sinus infection coming on most of the week and all I wanted to do when Friday rolled around was to get on a plan and get the heck out of Dodge (well, actually Chattanooga). Unfortunately, one of the worst snow storms in recent memory was bearing down on the South and by 10 am, all flights into and out of Atlanta, where I had a connection, were cancelled.

The first three phone calls to Delta were greeted with the announcement that “All circuits were busy.” I managed to get through on the fourth try only to be met with the announcement that Delta wasn’t answering the phones due to extreme weather. I finally got my travel agent on the phone about 11:00 and was told that Delta had rebooked me on a Saturday flight. I groaned and asked if there was any other way to get home. There was a 3:15 flight for $1000, a 12:15 Delta flight connecting through Memphis that I might be able to make, and a 5:55 American flight. I told the customer service rep to get me on the Delta flight and flew out of the office with barely a goodbye.
Traffic was light and I made it to the airport by 11:30, but unfortunately there were no seats available on the flight. I returned my rental car and tried getting American Express on the phone to see about getting onto the American flight. After 10 minutes on hold, I decided I’d try my luck with the American Representative at the airport. The Southern beauty behind the counter told me that there were seats on the flight, but suggested I talk to Delta to see if Delta would be willing to transfer my ticket to American. She said the man working the Delta counter was a very nice man and would most likely be wiling to help me out.
I headed over to the Delta line and when I made it to the counter, I asked the gentleman if it was possible to transfer me to American. He said that they really weren’t supposed to do that for weather, but when I told him all I wanted to do was get home, he took pity on me and worked some voodoo magic to transfer my ticket to American. We walked over to the American counter and finalized the deal. I thanked my savior profusely and Delta earned my respect for having employees willing to actually help people and not just spout corporate policy.
The next five hours were spent watching the snow dust down upon the tarmac and working on my laptop while I waited for my trip home. Finally, 5:25 rolled around and it was time to board. I texted John that I was finally on my way home and then settled into enjoy the trip.
Arriving in Chicago, I found my luggage and headed out to the kiss and fly where John and Luke were waiting. Ahh, home blissful home.

Helping Bliss

Long, long ago, I listed one of my blissmakers as helping other people and easing their burden. It’s one of hte blissmakers that’s lingered the longest without being written about, mainly because I was waiting for a big, showy, look at me gesture to convince all of you how wonderful I was about easing someone else’s burden. The gesture had to be perfect, it had to be about someone else, but still make me look good.

Everytime, I’d review my blissmakers with the goal being to write about one of them and close it out, that one kept jumping out at me and taunting me as if to say, that I’d never do something that would satisfy my strict criteria. I’ve been thinking about that one a lot lately, especially since I discovered the 29gifts.org site which challanges us to give every day for 29 days. Now typically, when Americans think of giving, they think like I do about the big showy gestures. But giving doesn’t have to be big showy gestures, it should come from the heart and it can be as simple as a smile, a kind word, or a compliment. So with that in mind, I’ve joined the 29 day challange and to get started, I’d like to share with you some of the ways that I’ve helped ease people’s burden over the last few months. The point of this is not to convince you all that I’m a saint, but to help you realize that every little bit counts:

  • I dropped everything to go out and help my mom when she needed me. It wasn’t an emergency, but she needed my brother to sign some paperwork so we both went out on a Saturday at the last minute.

  • I helped a coworker track down a contact in another division. It would have been easy to just say, “Sorry, not my problem.” But helping him out was the right thing to do.

  • I’ve taken my daughter to tanning more than once on days when I’d just as soon crawl into bed and sleep the day away.

  • I’ve donated a typewriter and clothes to our local Goodwill. This benefits both the person who buys the stuff at a discount and Goodwill as they profit from my donations.

  • I’ve given my husband a back rub to ease his aching back.

None of these are grand and magnificant gestures, but they were all given from the heart with no expectation of repayment and they were all done because they were the right thing to do and that in itself is a pretty blissful thing.