Letter to my children: Thank You Notes Ripples vs Cultural Etiquette
/“Okay, my loves. Before we play with our new games today we need to write thank you notes.”
Here it comes.
Bean collapsed onto a chair. “Moooommmm, I hate writing thank you notes. No one else has to do it. We never get them from anyone else.”
Right, it is not so often that I have such a clear choice of passing along the snarky judgements of my mother or choosing a more generous interpretation.* Think think.
I sat down and took a deep breath.
“Every time we have dinner with N and her family a few days later I receive a thank you note. A beautiful card arrives in the mail and I savor opening it.”
I paused to make sure both of you were still listening. “And it makes me remember what a wonderful evening we had and how lucky I am to know them. Both E and L sent thank you notes after my wedding to Meme and Baba and I reread them every year when we look at our wedding book.” Corinna, the audience is fading.
“Bean, do you think we would have gotten shortbread from our neighbors as a gift if you hadn’t brought them brownies?”
“Probably not.”
“Right, that is what I am talking about. Energy moves in circles and ripples and if you feed the circle it grows bigger and spills into other circles. We got shortbread from our neighbors precisely BECAUSE you dropped off brownies out of the blue. And now the next time you want to bake we can do the same thing again and strengthen that energy circle more and more.”
“Okay, fine.” Bean stood up and walked to the stationary pile.
Dragon piped up, “can I use your fountain pen?”
Whew, avoided the whole etiquette discussion with its many layers of shoulds and cultural judgements.
As a front line staff at Zingerman’s Deli I was encouraged to write out shoutouts to my co-workers that would be published in the monthly in house staff newsletter. When I became a manager at Zingerman’s the directive became a rule - I needed to write two thank you notes a month to co-workers, staff, whomever.
It was always so much fun to get the monthly newsletter. Reading through the 3-4 pages of quick notes, you would look for your name and names of friends: “From Jon - Thanks Tom for your help with the heavy olive oil lifting. You always have my back!” “From Sara - Chef Alice, I can’t believe how delicious the chicken pot pie is - thank you for being so talented!” “From Jeff - Katie, you rocked that presentation - thank you for teaching me such interesting stuff.”
The ripples rippling and growing and strengthening and rippling.
*Thank you Dr. Becky.
