Saying Thank You

I have been working on a project that has just ended and it was a great success. It was a social event needing lots of coordination and many community touch points but the most critical one was the police. We had a great time and they did a good job to the extent that the OCS was on the road manning traffic for us (well, manning his team). Afterwards I went back to the station to say thank you. First to him and then to the office team.

Now, many wondered why I bothered going back to say thanks for something that the officers are paid to do. Well, it is simple. I am learning to be grateful for things and to express my gratitude openly and to the right people. I could sit in home, in the review meeting and other fora and talk about the great help the police gave me and they never hear it; or I could drive back there and say thank you and allow them for one moment to feel appreciated before they did back into their hard work.

In my visits to the police station, they were several, I realised just how human they are and how hard their work is. It isn’t easy being stone faced with a parent begging you to release their child who you have found with contraband and need to take to court. It isn’t easy watching a mother hear how her child died by hit and run. It isn’t easy to watch a father’s hope die as he listens to the vile words cursing him from the mouth of a child. It is even scarier to see the realities of the criminal nature of your locality and still raise your child in that locality. There is also another hard work they do. Their shifts are extensively long especially when they are short staffed.

I realised there are many people I need to consciously say thank you to more often whether others do or not. Housekeepers, bus conductors, matatu drivers, motorbike riders, cleaners, security guards, county council parking attendants, ticketing agents, servers in hotels, and maybe a few more I don’t remember right now. Many may disagree with me but I have come to understand that no matter ones profession, we are all people and we would all appreciate some gratitude for the work we do.

If I thank you for a job done warms my heart even if I am paid to do the task, won’t it also the warm the heart of another. It is in the simple things that the world will go around.

12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Matthew 7:12 (NKJV)

31 And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.

Luke 6:31 (NKJV)

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