My Friend Cathy
An elderly blind man sat at the edge of a plaza with a tin can at his feet and next to it, a sign that read: “I am blind, please help.” There were only a few coins in the can.
A man was walking by. He stood and looked at the old man debating whether or not to add his own coins to the can. Instead, he took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He then put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.
Soon the can began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind man. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The one who was blind recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”
The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.”
What he had written was: “Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.”
Both signs told people the old man was blind. While the first sign simply said the man was blind, the second sign pointed the readers to those things in their own lives they had to be grateful for and sparked the generosity lying dormant within.
Isn’t it true that if we look at things with a different perspective that things seem a lot clearer and more meaningful than at times when everything is right in our faces?