Actions speak louder than words

Just over a week ago, I wrote about the effect our words could have. Recently I was reminded of the effect our actions can have.

I was volunteering on a children’s residential activity break at Go Beyond ’s centre near Par. They were a great group of children from Wiltshire. Some of the boys were boisterous and loud, like many 12-year-old boys, so I decided to sit at their table during mealtimes to keep some sort of order. We had great fun during the week going off-site for rock climbing, a visit to a trampoline park, the indoor fun park at Trethorne and a walk to the beach. Onsite we played pool, table tennis, air hockey and more in the games barn, dodgeball on the trampolines in the sports barn as well as shooting basketball baskets. We expressed our creativity in the arts barn and played team games in the lounge as well as having a scavenger hunt in the centre’s grounds.

Each evening the children would be asked in turn what their best bit of the day was and if they had a star of the day; someone who had been kind to them, or helped them, or made them laugh. On the last evening, they were also asked for their best bit of the week and star or stars of the week. I featured several times as someone’s star of the week, with one of the boys explaining that he had chosen me because of my jokes and because I shared things with them. The two incidents I remember were on Valentines Day when the children all had a milk chocolate heart on their plate while being vegan, I had a small packet of love hearts. I shared those with the boys. The following day one of the girls had a birthday and there was cake. Everyone had a slice except for me as it was not vegan. I had a special big cupcake which was scrummy. A couple of the boys mentioned that it looked good so I gave them a taste. I assume that it was those incidents that they were referring to, there may have been more. I was amazed that the sharing had a big effect on them, perhaps it doesn’t happen a lot in their lives.

Writing the above reminded me about something that happened several years ago. Someone sent me a copy of an article written in an Australian magazine. It was written by someone I had met while taking part in the Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon and was about the event and how it had changed him in many ways. One of those changes was going vegan. He had wanted to for years but held back because he thought it would negatively affect his running. He wrote that having met me he knew it would not. We had not talked about veganism; he only knew I was vegan because I was served different food at the pre and post-event dinners. We did talk about some of the events I had completed, the 56-mile Comrades marathon, the Marathon des Sables and the Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon, at that point several times. I was staggered that I prompted a change in someone on the other side of the world.

The message I take away from those two incidents is that our actions can have a big influence on others. We owe it to ourselves, and others, to make sure those influences are positive. Being considerate when driving, treating staff well in shops and restaurants and being positive in our interaction with people will all get noticed. Let us, through our simple everyday actions, build a better world.