Help, unnoticed …

My creativity grows like mushrooms after the rain. One moment, there is nothing, then I turn around and there it clicks. Again and again!

It’s written in the wind, it’s everywhere I go 🎶

Today, I had some Bircher Müesli (cereals) with yogurt. So I remembered: When I watched TV as a child, there was a cartoon family Alemann with a child character named „Müsli“. Nothing important. But so it went.

Because, as I took another spoon, I connected cereals to breadcrumbs and recalled a short cartoon sequence of my childhood memory that can teach us how we can help each other at little effort!

It goes like this:

A yellow duck, 🐤 hungry, is struggling with a sticky or stale breakfast roll 🥯 which keeps falling of her beak. Quacking, taking a rest, repeating.

Frustrated and dizzy, she finally gives up.

Just at that moment, a little blue elephant of about her size (funny corporate peculiarity of that TV programme) comes in, and, completely unaware of her, walks in to then step on that roll and thereby crushes it into a hundred delicious breadcrumbs.

Zero effort, big help!

The duck quacks thank you and bends her beak down to enjoy the meal.

🥨🥖🐥🥖🥨🐥🐘

Examples I found

It has happened to me as well, (almost) unnoticed by the other one.

Both ways.

A midnight‘s nap

I sat on a train back home late in the evening. Next to me, a lady held her mobile phone loosely in her hand, and I noticed she was dozing off, almost dropping it. So I hummed gently and she woke up.

Likewise, when I was 17 and went out for a little walk, I found a pupil‘s ID card, walked up to the address on it, and handed it back.

If you move along with your eyes open, those little things are as easy as snapping your fingers. The lost item you hand back. The shoelaces about to let someone stumble. The bottle in the supermarket that is about to fall off the shelf. What if, next time, it’s your own shoelaces?

Sometimes, I get rewarded by someone saying I’ve helped them a great deal that day, but sometimes the other one doesn’t even know or notice it. Nevertheless, I enjoy it.

Stepping out into the light

Here is a little thing that helped me a lot but stayed unnoticed.

I was stressed out by working and commuting, accompanied by my apparently endless searching for a flat, so that I knew how important taking some rest and inserting mindfulness breaks can be.

I tried to do something nice every few days, I went to the cinema, some yoga, drawing, eating out, or just a walk to a lake.

So one Friday, I went out to have a good time on a free open-air concert. I really did! Sang along when they played a song I knew. Moved up towards the stage. Then, one minute, I was about to make up my mind and talk to that someone who came walking by, but unfortunately I missed the chance. 🤷‍♀️

Slightly disappointed, and distracted, I left the scene, bought myself some food. 🥨

But later on, this nameless memory kept ringing in my mind – and when I needed it the most, feeling lost in the crowd somewhere and the hustling wouldn’t end, there was always something there to remind me that somewhere out there must be sunshine behind the clouds!

🎶🎵🎶🎶🎵

Sharing knowledge is easy

When I was a junior developer, starting out, I often struggled with asking questions precisely when searching for some line to fix on the internet.

We all have been there, haven’t we?

First I had to find the right words, rephrased it several times, then leafed through plenty of results to pick the right answer that often didn’t seem to nail it in the first place…

Google, try, bother, fiddle, learn, repeat.

So, as I know more now, if I can, I am always happy to share a line of helping a less experienced peer in a short text message.

We are here to lift each other up!

Now over to you!

Did you ever do some little thing that felt like snapping your fingers but helped another person a great deal?

Tell me in the comments!

🌿🪴🌻🌿🪴🌻🌿🪴🌻🌿🪴🌻🌿

If you happen to draw a blank here: Stop moving around like those dizzy masses, hurrying back home and cursing every minute of waiting in a queue.

Make each wait a mindful pause to notice what is happening around you!