Being Positive: A Simple Choice
A total stranger at a New York train station taught me a priceless lesson about the power of choice. Read how.
“[K]indness cannot be evaluated in dollars and cents. The only way to measure it is in the weight of compassion the act itself carries forward into the life of another” -Adam Braun. And another, and another.
I was waiting for my train home from New York on Monday morning when I heard a stocky African American man asking if travelers needed help with directions. He was sincere, and his smile exuded warmth and happiness. After a few minutes, I approached him, “I gotta say, I love your positivity.” He responded with joy, “Thanks man! What’s your name?” I proceeded to tell him my name, and I learned that his was Jamay (JA-may). I told him I was traveling to Boston, and he excitedly told me he’d make me first in line to board. He directed me over to a few other college students standing off to the side, apparently kids whose recognition of Jamay’s enthusiasm had also been rewarded.
After striking up a conversation with the other students, a remarkable thing happened: A nearby woman found something we had said interesting, so she joined in. Within a few minutes, ten or so people previously on their phones in isolation (despite the abundance of people in bustling Penn Station), were chatting energetically. The mood transformed totally, from one of dullness to one of excitement. Through his simple positivity and kindness, Jamay had not only lightened my mood, but those around us.
Before I headed into the train a few minutes later, I yelled out, “Thank you Jamay!” He responded, “come here for a sec.” I turned around and went over. “Pay it forward,” he said. “Promise me that you’ll give someone what I just gave you.” I was floored by his insight. It took some time, but it eventually dawned on me that what I thought was a random act of a kindness was wholly intentional. There was no way embracing compassion and remaining positive in the congested, frustrating, sometimes smelly Penn Station was natural. And if it wasn’t natural, Jamay had to be making a choice. A choice to smile and radiate a cheerful, contagious energy.
On the train home, I thought more about that choice. How many of us are aware that we can choose our attitude at any given moment? How often do we exercise this awareness? How often do we act upon it? The questions kept coming.
However small in the big picture, it could be that Jamay found extraordinary meaning in making strangers just a bit happier. In his spectacular book The Promise of a Pencil, Adam Braun says the most direct route to happiness is in providing joy to others. Perhaps that’s why Jamay was so positive that day. Because it actually made him feel better. Or maybe someone had once given him the gift he had just given me, and he was just paying it forward as I was now obligated to do.
Jamay’s culture of positivity reminded me of This is Water, a commencement speech David Foster Wallace gave in 2005. In his talk, Wallace makes a clear distinction between our default, unconscious setting, and the one that entails making an active choice to be positive.
He says:
“If you really learn how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. This is the freedom of real education. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. That is real freedom. Awareness.”
And freedom doesn’t exist unless we use it.
It’s isn’t horribly impossible, either, even in the worst of situations. I’m constantly humbled by how sometimes even refugees and Holocaust survivors remain positive despite all odds.
Sometimes it can be scary to consider how much of an impact we (can and do) make. The old adage, “it is our light not our darkness that most frightens us” also rings true in the context of positivity. Each of us can make sizable impacts on the lives of others. In fact, we already do every day. It’s just time we start choosing what sort of energy we affect them with.
It starts with a simple mind shift. We don’t have time to waste focusing on what’s wrong. It’s time we depart from the world with us at the center, and arrive at the one where we recognize that others have issues as well, sometimes even larger ones than ours.
It’s time we reclaim our power of choice. Jamay certainly did, and it affected me. I wish I could tell him how much his positivity meant, but hopefully my paying-it-forward and this post compensates.
Hope you enjoyed. Make sure to subscribe below to get these thought-provoking ideas every Thursday straight to your inbox.