By Joe Mazzella
Not everything you learn in school comes in the classroom. Sometimes academia falls short. Sometimes the wisest lessons come at the most unlikely times. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned didn’t come from a book or a teacher but from a little girl in elementary school.
It was at lunchtime. We were all sitting at the tables in the lunchroom eating a hot lunch. Now the hot lunches the school provided weren’t always the best but they did have the most delicious hot rolls. Often I would trade my dessert with someone just to get an extra hot roll. We lived in a poor area so most of us qualified for a free lunch. Some of the parents at that time, however, made a few dollars too much so their kids had to buy their lunch every day even if they struggled to afford it. It was only later in the year that I noticed one boy who sometimes ate lunch with us and sometimes just sat at the table with nothing. I finally realized that his parents couldn’t afford to buy his lunch every single day. One day he was sitting at the table trying not to look hungry when a little girl across from me handed him her hot roll. “I’m full,” she said. “Do you want this?” The boy happily accepted then I handed him my hot roll. “I’m stuffed too,” I said. The little girl and I smiled shyly at each other while he ate his rolls. And from that day on whenever he sat with us without a tray we made sure that he at least got something to eat.
That little girl taught me something that I carry in my heart to this day. She taught me that a single gesture of love can influence a life, a single gesture of love can help to change the world. I am sure God smiled down on her that first time she shared her food with a hungry boy.
To this day I try to fill my days with as many gestures of love as I can. To this day I try to share my kindness with everyone I meet. To this day I try to follow that little girl’s example and live in a way that makes God smile and the angels sing. May we all do the same.
