Humility

The town where I lived before this had a bunch of large, city-wide festivals every year. We have a friend who spent a couple of months with us and he was amazed at the scope and frequency of these events. “May, June, July, August. Is there a month where this town doesn’t have some big organized event?!?” he asked. There was a great sense of community, that’s for sure. And as far as I know, the people who did the organizing and actual work were all volunteers. Masses of volunteers. But I was surprised when I once noticed a prominent local business owner picking up trash downtown during ArtFest. He felt that no one should be beneath menial labor and this was how he’d decided he’d give back to the community. Every year, during the full three or four days of an event, there he was. Picking up cups, cans, papers, food containers or dropped food and depositing the stuff into designated containers. I knew another business executive there who spent one Saturday every month cleaning the bathrooms at a local men’s shelter. “There’s nothing like cleaning toilets to keep a guy  humble,” he said with a grin. I have never forgotten that.

Photo courtesy of MabelAmber at Pixabay.com