Appreciation

Are co-workers your friends? I doubt it. They’re just co-workers. Some of them you like more, some less, about most of them you don’t really care.

There is that guy at work who always says ‘Good morning’ to me, every day. We’re not friends or anything. We only speak about things related to work. I sort of like him for that. He’s always polite, and his smiley face is like the sun in a rainy day.

I remember one morning. I was really tired after a night full of nightmares. The only thing I wanted that day was to be invisible. Then the storm arrived and destroyed me. I didn’t respond to his ‘Hi’.

My head was spinning, I wasn’t myself. But this wasn’t supposed to be an excuse. I was really rude to someone I liked, to someone who was always nice to me. He didn’t deserve to be treated like this. I heard him say that, yet I decided to ignore him. Why? My moodiness has no limits.

I regretted my ignorance right away. I wanted to fix it, but I really didn’t know how. It was too late. Everything I built in myself collapsed. I can only imagine how bad he must have felt. He must have wondered how possibly he had offended me that I showed him such ignorance. He must have thought it was his fault.

(On the other hand, I might be completely wrong about him. Maybe this situation didn’t have any impact on him. Maybe it didn’t touch his feelings at all. After all, I was just another co-worker whom he just has to be nice to.)

You see, you never really know what impact you have on someone’s life until you hurt them.

How does the story end? Turns out his kindness was real. Real and more powerful than my moodiness and ignorance. I feel like I don’t deserve it… That made me realise I should appreciate more the people in my life.