Do the thing
Today I share a short episode after feeling weighed down by the news, especially events in Lebanon where I worked for eight years as I worry about former colleagues, the country, and the stray animals and pets left behind.
I reflect on an email from writer Sahil Bloom about a newspaper story in which a florist handed out coffee to people waiting outside a funeral home on a cold night, a gesture that deeply moved a mother mourning her 16-year-old son, illustrating the lesson to “just do the thing” you can do.
Over the years, I have tried to do something similar, picking up trash on Lebanese beaches and elsewhere, feeding stray cats and dogs in Lebanon and Iraq, and continuing similar small efforts at home in Canada, emphasizing that even unseen impacts matter and encouraging listeners to act, not for recognition, but to leave places better than they found them.
You can find Sahil Bloom's article here: Just Make the Coffee | The Curiosity Chronicle
You can follow me on Instagram here.
Welcome to This Daring Adventure podcast where we work on bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to live a bigger and bolder life. In this podcast, we will provide inspiration, tips, and skills you need to make your life the adventure you want it to be. Here's your host, mindset mentor, and life coach, Trista Guertin. Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Staring Adventure. This is episode 160. I can't believe we're at 160. Sometimes it feels like it should be more, but 160 is. It's a significant number, so I'm pretty impressed with myself, I must say. So who knew? I never imagined, but it's exciting to be here and thank you for listening. Thank you for being here with me. So today I wanted to do just a short episode. Feeling beat down by all the news and everything that's going on. I'm paying particular attention to what's going on in Lebanon. So I spent eight years there working and thinking about my former colleagues and all the wonderful people that I met there who were kind and generous and it's, it's such a dynamic, interesting country. So I hate to see anything happen to it again. Again and again, and I think about the dogs and the cats, all the strays that I left behind and it's hard to watch. So I'm hoping everybody there as well and staying safe. And I wanted something a little inspirational, maybe a little pick me up for this episode and. I kept thinking about this email that I read yesterday. It was from Sahil Bloom who's a writer, and I don't really read a lot by him. I do subscribe to his newsletter. I have his book, but I don't really read them regularly and I haven't read the book, but I did happen to open his email yesterday. And he had written about a newspaper article that he had found several years ago and kept with him and would reread at least once a year for inspiration. And it was about a woman who was telling a story about being at a funeral home for a visitation. And I guess it was a particularly cold night and there was a, a significant turnout for this visitation and someone outside was handing out coffee to people as they were waiting to come in and enter. And this woman noticed. And went back later to say thank you because she figured it was from the floral shop across the street from the funeral home. And sure enough, it was, and the man there said yes, he had been distributing coffee because he didn't know what else to do, and the only thing he could think of was to make coffee. And so he made the coffee, and it turns out that this woman was at the visitation because it was for her 16-year-old son. So she was particularly touched by his gesture. And so the moral of the story was to just do the thing. To do it, if that's what you can do. If it's just making coffee, that's what we do. And I think I've applied this in my own life over the past several years, and as I mentioned in Lebanon, and I don't mean to beat down Lebanon, well it's in this situation, but certainly, were a lot of stray dogs and cats and a lot of garbage. And so. I would pick up the garbage and put it in the bin. There were always lots of bins, but there was always lots of garbage lying around. And particularly on the beach. The beach, the beaches there are beautiful, particularly in the south. They're all sand and they would be full of garbage and I would go around and just pick up garbage when I could. Sometimes I would have a bag. Sometimes I would just pick up what I saw. Lots of water bottles and caps. And things, cigarette packages, and I would just pick up what I could, and some days I figured it just didn't matter on the beach, on the Cornish, wherever I was, it just, it would just be replaced the next day or the next hour. But I reminded myself that, you know what, it, it does make a difference. it's just one small part. And I'm leaving things a little bit better than I found them, and that's enough. I can't stop the other people from picking up garbage, but maybe somebody saw me picking up garbage and decided to pick up garbage too. I don't know. But it made a difference to me and I believe it made a difference to the environment there. And the same with. Feeding cats and dogs. And I remember being back in Iraq and somebody saying, Trista, you can't save all of the animals. And I couldn't. I couldn't and I couldn't. But I could give one of them a meal or several of them a meal that day. At that moment, they had a meal, they had something to eat, or they got a flee and sick treatment. Some of them got home, some of them are in Canada, but I did what I could and I believed in that moment that it made a difference to them and it made a difference to me, and that's what I do. And I still go around picking up garbage hair. Again, in some of these places, there's one street. As I walk to the cemetery, it turns out, I don't know who it is, but somebody keeps throwing out their Coors light cans or their, I don't know, bush light, or there's some sort of vodka drink. It's always on the street. It's always one or two. Anyway, I go around and I pick it up. Because it makes a difference to me. that's it. I do the thing because I can and because you never know and it just, it's something I can do. I'm leaving the place a little bit better than I found it, as I said, and I was coaching a client the other day who was mentioning she's working with children. She felt that it wasn't making any difference, and I truly believe that it does make a difference, but maybe you just can't see it. Or if you're telling yourself that it doesn't make a difference, that's what you're gonna find evidence of. But in general, I believe you just have to trust that you are making a difference. And it's not for the reward, it's not for the respect. it's not for the pat on the back. I do it because it makes me feel good. I do it because I live here and I contribute, and I do it here because I can, and it does make a difference in some small way. I trust that it is. So if you have a question. Whether to do the thing or not, whatever it is, whether it's making coffee or picking up a piece of garbage or feeding a stray animal, whatever your thing is, do it. Trust that it is making some small difference in ways that you can't possibly know. Trust that you are leaving things better than you found them. Trust that the greatest reward will be how you feel and what you think and how you show up. Alright, that's it. It's a little sad. but I think it's an important message. Thank you for listening. Hang in there, Lebanon. And I'll talk to you guys next week. Bye-bye.
