Recently I sent an online gift to a friend in India on her birthday. Having heard stories of gifts not reaching at all or reaching late(pretty early for the next birthday :) though) if you had some luck I was pretty much skeptical of sending the gift. But deciding to show my optimism here too I sent her a cute soft toy(at least looked cute on the web site). Then also called her up twice to confirm about the gift. Its something she said that set me thinking. Her frank and honest words that it was not necessary to send a gift which I had not actually seen(Quality Issues) made me bit unhappy. Her valuable assessment of the gift to be not more than 500 Rs made me even more uneasy as I had spent much more than that . Vowing to be more practical in such issues I hid my discontent and continued the conversation cheerfully.
After our usual long chit chat at the end when she said " Despite of all facts, the toy did bring an IMMEDIATE SMILE to my face " , it put an end to all the disappointment.Practicality is good but going that EXTRA MILE does pay :)
We do need to make choices sometimes -- Practicality / SMILE you can bring on someone's face...
What would you choose ?? I had rather go for the second option :)
9 comments:
I would say that this is exactly what "Randy Pausch's" said in his last lecture. There are a lot of things that are not practical but if it can bring joy to someone - I think it should be fine..!!
I feel, we go beyond our limits for only those people who mean a lot to us. So practicality is not in chosing to do that extra bit for someone rather it is in the realisation of the value that person has. We need to prioritise our relations.If the person is valuable for me, I would never mind doing things for that friend.
Whatsoever it is, what matters is that by making someone feel special, somewhere we feel happy for ourselves as well..
Its so good to know what the intellectual 'Ruchi' feels. May be college didnt give me many chances to know u, but this blog does..
Well written :)
@ajay : Heard lot about that lectures, will hear it sometime and good to note that people believe in this concept.
@varsha : Yeah so true, making someone happy makes you feel good too.Know the things you can do for people close to you :)Its only the ""few things"" that you don't know, you can know through this blog.
Well I am not sure if sending a gift over the internet is really going "out of your way" to show that you care..I am also not sure if you really need to spend money to make anyone feel special..
But I am quite sure your phone call would have made your friend feel on top of the world..
What would I chose? I dont know..I did send an online gift once but the only motive behind that was to surprise my friend.. :-)
Sending gift over internet.. I am not sure how valuable it is.. I don't agree its going out of way. I dont think it qualifies as going extra mile.. !!!
How much a person cares about you, it will show in difficult situations, thats real character of a person...
Going the extra mile has a broader domain.. Its not just restricted to spending money/sending gifts. There is more to it. When not near that is also a way to make someone feel special so that is not the main point of my post.
The debatable point here is not whether sending gifts is going out of way but whether you want put in that "extra effort" or shrug it off saying people have become practical and they don't really care..
@anusha : The phone call did make her happy but the gift did add to her joy . Being far that was the only way I thought I could do that.
I guess you did something same though not really sure if it was a shock or suprise :P
@prasad : That's true : A friend in need is a friend indeed. But you can always do small things to keep the relations alive.
well may be in these times, sending a paper letter to a friend from US to India would qualify for going out of the way..and if I receive something like that, i would feel the personal touch and the thought that my friend would have put in to do something like that..i personally feel that an email which would make that person feel important will be more effective in keeping that "relation alive" and that would be a very small thing to do..being far off, that is the least i can do..me thinks..
me also thinks, how could the other person value a thing which you never touched or felt before you sent it..you could not even write the note personally in your handwriting..when you really do not know the value of the gift, how could the person know its worth..recently i was having a discussion with a close friend about this..and i did agree that i would gift someone something which i value...because that gift would actually have a part of me wrapped beautifully in a nice gift paper..and that is one reason when i try to avoid giving gifts..not many people can manage a part of me..
about my gift..well the idea was to surprise her..but i would not be surprised if it came as a shock to her..
long discussion on your first post..may there be many.. ;-)
Hmmm indeed it generated lot of traffic . Good to know how people actually think.
@anusha : Appreciate your thoughts but I will still stick with mine :)
Good start Bhindu.
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