Encouragement

I have been thinking about encouragement and correction lately. Have you noticed that many times when correction is given, there are specific items and instances mentioned of when something wrong was done. Eg: When you drove you car you are supposed to use your turn signal.

When encouragement is given it is very general. Eg: You are a good driver.

I wonder if by making encouragement general, we trivialize it. I wonder how much more appreciated it would be if we encouraged people while using specific instances.

So I was sitting in a coffeeshop in Basel, Switzerland...

Man, it is fun to start a post like that. You would think that after living here for a year and a half and being only 30 minutes from Basel, that it may get comfortable, but it still feels pretty cool. Wow, I am blessed.

Anyway, I got my coffee and then walked upstairs to find a seat. I found a comfortable one and sat down in it. There was a man reading the newspaper on the other side of our little coffee table. I was getting my book out and his friend came over and went to sit down, but then realized that there were some comfortable chairs for both of them across the room. So they got up to move.

Now up until now we had just exchanged a couple of glances. But as he left, he was very polite and wanted to acknowledge that he was leaving me by myself so we had a very short, typically German conversation. He wished me a schoenen abend (Beautiful evening), smiled and walked away.

Danke, gleichfalls.