In a holiday season that feels crowded with frantic text messages, frightening mall parking garages, long lines, and impatient Starbucks customers, I sometimes find it difficult to make time and space to think about things that, well, really matter.
So when I arrived hurriedly to work one December morning, a long “to-do” list on my desk and a scrap of paper scrawled with “gift ideas” trailing hopelessly out of my pocket, I hardly expected a lukewarm cup of coffee to provide motivation for a productive day.
But within minutes, I received just the encouragement I needed – much better than any cup of joe – a letter from an Outward Bound scholarship student.
Carina Bustos, age 17, from East Palo Alto, California, had just written to inform me she’d completed her requisite forty hours of community service. While some of us have been carefully outlining our Christmas lists for the past several months, Carina has been giving the best gift of all – the gift of her time.
- Scholarship Student Carina Bustos is pictured in the middle, on course with Outward Bound.
Carina Bustos is a full-tuition Outward Bound scholarship recipient, which means the three-week Sierra Nevada Mountaineering Course she went on this summer was fully funded – with a caveat. Upon her return, Carina was required to give back to her community.
As a volunteer at a local senior center this fall, Carina spent time with people who, more than anything, “just enjoyed having someone to listen to them.” And even though she often worked with seniors who suffered memory loss or confusion, Carina says her senior companions carried great knowledge and tended to be wonderful storytellers. Carina especially savored her hours with Beatrice – the “loudest” and most “hilarious” senior in Lytton Gardens; during many hours spent playing Connect Four out on the patio and chatting in Spanish about their lives, the two developed a special bond. “I felt so glad to be able to brighten her day by having conversations with her in Spanish,” says Carina, “because she only spoke Spanish … so [the other seniors] would not understand her.” Each time Carina departed, she would tell Beatrice she would return soon – and she always did.
Carina’s simple gift to Beatrice – the gift of listening – is clearly better than any 4G I-Phone or X-Box Kinect. But Carina got something significant out of the experience, too. In her time at the senior center, Carina learned that “small deeds, such as having one-on-one time … make a great difference in others’ lives,” and “through helping others you may discover new things about yourself as well.”
Indeed, the gift-giving went both ways. Carina explains, “I was able to make an impact on Beatrice’s life and she on me by making me feel like someone special in her life.” I could almost see Carina smiling as she wrote these words. She had certainly made me smile.
Later that afternoon when the coffee was long gone and my to-do list partially tackled, as I filed in behind a long line of tail lights and engine-revving BMW’s, I reflected on Carina’s gift. And I considered, for a moment, driving past the shopping area, even skipping my exit on the highway, in order to go straight to my own favorite storyteller, my grandmother, who could certainly use something other than a new Christmas sweater this year.
