Hoping my (now 7-year-old) son, Gianni, will read this when he reaches his teens. 

Dialogue from my morning interaction with a twenty-something stranger at a downtown cafe.

“What can I get you?” 

“The best thing you can do for me, right now, at this exact moment, is an organic green tea.”

Suddenly it dawned on me — the best thing anyone can do for me at this particular moment is serve up an organic green tea.

When I frame the encounter accordingly in my mind, ordering hot tea on a winter day is no longer a mindless, mundane and low-vibration exchange. Instead, ordering tea becomes sort of a big deal. It becomes downright fantastic. It becomes grounds, not for a the-customer-is-always-right mindset, but an attitude of gratitude.

Why shouldn’t we consistently exhibit as much kindness, enthusiasm and humanity on the purchasing side as we expect on the “customer service” side of a transaction?

I paid for the tea and walked away feeling as if I had been invited into someone’s home. The pleasure was mine, not the cafe’s. I came away feeling as if I had stumbled upon a valuable mindtrick, a refreshing, non-entitlement perspective. The start of something new. As though no future purchase will ever be the same.

The little things — because they comprise the overwhelming majority of our life moments — are in fact the big things. Whenever I walk into a store or restaurant, I will do my best to think of the person greeting me as a gracious host welcoming me into their home. Someone who’s making my world better. A dream-weaver. Fulfilling the best thing that anyone can do for me at this particular moment. 

As Eckhart Tolle would say, “What could possibly be better than that?”