Can I Tell You Something That Made Me Happy?

A tiny story about how caring is contagious

I recently received this text message:

“My friend just sent me this amazing message about the birthday letter I gave him long ago. He says he reads it often which makes me so happy. Thanks for making my friendship better, I think you’re making the world a better place. ”

I always send letters in the mail, and she was talking about how it inspired her to do the same with her own relationships.

It’s funny, it was never my intention to use letter writing as a way to make the world a better place.

Letter writing was a little novel thing I adopted, first out of necessity to communicate with a grandmother who had no use for a cellphone, and then out of love to let people know they were on my mind. Birthdays, travel postcards, graduations, new jobs, or just simple hellos. I have infinite reasons to write someone a letter.

It was only later that I suddenly found myself inspiring a lot of other people to do the same — to take the time to handwrite letters and postcards to their friends and their family, not because they had to, but because they wanted to pass along that feeling of receiving a handwritten note from someone they cared about.

It made me realize that no matter how small, the spirit of action in leading change is one of the most powerful tools there are in making the world a better place.