A few weeks ago I was enjoying a break from incessant rain and blustery winds with my favorite Sonic Happy Hour treat. The half price drinks from two until four were apparently irresistible to a lot of people because the place was hopping when I pulled in and ordered my green tea with raspberry. When a slice of sun appeared, I let the windows down on my truck and dug out my phone, settling back to enjoy a chat with a friend, along with my tea.
For thirty minutes or so, the mild sun and the conversation warmed me up, body and soul. Life was good.
Then I tried to crank the truck.
Rrrrr…rrrrr…rrrr. Nothing to be heard but the pitiful groan of a drained battery.
I’d just done one of those exasperating things that I do when I’m distracted: it’s an old truck and, without realizing it, I’d turned the key too far and left it on.
There I sat.
I eased the driver’s door open and edged out because it seemed like the thing to do. Standing in front of the truck cab, I was about to tell an approaching server about my predicament, but, before I had a chance to speak, the young woman parked next to me on the driver’s side leaned her head out the window and asked if I needed help. I’d hardly started to tell her what I’d done, when two young men parked on my passenger side emerged from their car tugging a set of jumper cables from the back floorboard.
Three kind souls, who might or might not have still been in their teens, quickly decided that the cables would reach the battery in the girl’s car with ease. Before I could say that I had my own jumper cables, her hood was popped, the cables were connected, and I was behind the wheel, cranking the truck. It jumped right off and I was good to go.
Three young people, who’d never seen me before, stepped up with no prompting and offered me help when I was obviously frazzled. They brushed my thanks aside and, if they thought I needed supervision to drive, they were too considerate to let me see them roll their eyes. All three were polite and smiling and I was grateful for it.
They did good.
On the popular CBS program NCIS, the character Leroy Jethro Gibbs has a set of guidelines to which viewers have gradually been introduced over the course of twelve seasons. His team knows what he expects of himself, and of them, by the list referred to simply as Gibbs’s Rules.
It took eight seasons before there was a reference to Gibbs’s Rule #5: You don’t waste good.
There is a lot of good in this town and county, though we are affected by the problems that are plaguing many communities. Violence is startling and we’ve had recent violence that has jolted many of us into facing a reality that we’d been hoping wasn’t real.
As we face unwelcome truth, we who love this community are called upon to not waste good. Wherever we find good, whatever it looks like, we fritter it away it if we fail to nurture it. “Good” that isn’t recognized is an opportunity vanished, treasure squandered.
Rule#5, as practiced by Leroy Jethro Gibbs, applies to relationships. You don’t waste good when you see potential in another human being; you come up with ways to support it. Gibbs knows the power of paying attention to a deeper story that’s often unspoken.
The good in Alcorn County is created, at heart, by individuals connecting with each other. Whatever good we have, it starts with those core relationships, beginning with one person being touched by the life of another person, and it builds from there. These ever-changing relational pairs create the foundation for community. One on one.
I have no brilliant original ideas for how we go about not wasting the good that lives in Alcorn County. What I offer is a simple reminder that counseling clients find helpful: whatever is working, do more of that.
Whatever is good, do more of that.
We cannot drag others, kicking and screaming, out of the darkness of addiction, violence, and abuse. Neither should we be in denial about the impact of that darkness.
What we can do is fully live our own lives, with a passionate determination to actively seek out good and nurture it wherever we find it. We can make eye contact with the young man working the drive thru window and wish him a good day. We can sympathize with the young mom wrestling two little ones through the checkout line instead of sighing with aggravation behind her. We can go sit beside the person no one’s noticing. We can seek out the child that no one is hearing or the elder whose stories are falling on deaf ears.
Perhaps most importantly, we can keep our mouths shut and our ears open and hear with the heart the experiences of those with whom we’d like to think we have little in common.
One on one, or three on one— if they’re kind strangers with jumper cables— we can value our connections with others, and build on them, even the fleeting ones.
You don’t waste good.
Alcorn County resident Jaylene Whitehurst is an artist and Licensed Professional Counselor. She may be reached at 662-286-5433 or jaylene@heartworkccl.com. She contributes to Crossroads Magazine and the Daily Corinthian.
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