I See You

I've been thinking a lot lately about one of my favourite scenes ever from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV show, not the movie, in case there's anyone out there who still doesn't know the difference). It's from "The Prom" near the end of Season 3, and Buffy gets a surprise award:

"We're not good friends. Most of us never found the time to get to know you, but that doesn't mean we haven't noticed you. ... [W]henever there was a problem or something creepy happened, you seemed to show up and stop it. Most of the people here have been saved by you or helped by you at one time or another. ... So the senior class offers its thanks and gives you this. It's from all of us, and it has written here, 'Buffy Summers, Class Protector'."

There's power to doing good by stealth. To not announcing your good deeds. To doing what you can to make the world a better place without requiring or seeking or expecting applause.

Old photo from the blog, so I don't
know what the source is. Not my photo.

But there's incredible power to being the one who notices and says so. I've been so lucky to have accidentally amassed the most amazing crowd of people around me-- people who are smart and hardworking and dedicated and who make the world better just by being in it. I don't know how I landed here, but I do know this: I will do everything I can to make sure they feel like the rockstars they are.

Yesterday morning, I saw a woman on Congress Avenue hand a cup of 7-11 coffee to a homeless person who I see just about every day. I don't know what interactions they had before that moment. Maybe this happens every day, or maybe yesterday was special. But I tweeted this:

Let's be cheerleaders, y'all. Let's have eyes that catch people at their best and let them know we appreciate them. Let's have hearts that fill up and overflow and can't help but shower credit where it's due.

I see you. Who do you see?