Doing the right thing. It’s a core value, a prominent motivator and always impressive when it happens as things go awry.
When I arrived home, I stopped to pick up the mail at the top of the driveway like any other day. Only today, things were different. The entire mailbox and post were turned toward me, the mailbox open with the lid unable to close, and part of our flowers surrounding the post were mowed down.
It had been hit and the mowed down flowers suggested it wasn’t a car or motorcycle.
I reached in the mangled box and to my surprise, found the note above.
The neighbor’s son had hit it while driving his parent’s golf cart. His Mom had called both Kevin and me leaving messages to call and talk about how to make things right and to please call her back.
I’ve never met these neighbors. It was mostly a non-event in our world, they took any concern out of the situation by taking accountability, being proactive and ensuring all would be corrected.
My opening question when I called the neighbor back was how was her son, and how’d the golf cart do?
We laughed, all was fine with minimal consequence. We exchanged Mom conversation about how this was an opportunity to learn, better to happen at 13 than in a car in a few years and how grateful we were it wasn’t serious. We finished our conversation with “nice to meet you.”
The event reminded me to apply these same principles at work and home. When you do the right thing, it works.