I am the sort of person who likes setting out basic rules for myself. They make decisions easier when there are a lot of options, yay, but what happens when two rules come in conflict with each other?
Take this weekend, for example. I have a standing rule to support children who come to the door. We’ve donated bottles to girls doing recycling drives for their ringette teams. We buy chocolate from school kids raising money for classroom projects. And of course we buy cookies from Girl Guides. So when two boys came by with rakes asking if we needed some help cleaning up the leaves in our yard, I had a problem.
We don’t clean up the leaves, generally. We mow them so they provide fertilizer and protection for critters over the winter. We just hadn’t gotten around to the mowing part yet, and these budding entrepreneurs had noticed.
So, what to do when my two directives came into conflict? I decided to err on the side of kindness.
The boys did a good job cleaning up the yard. And when the rest of the leaves fall from the trees, we’ll leave them for the winter. That way we support the next generation of kids, and critters too.
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