S/o please share, something someone did to impact you

amother

Tue, Aug 30 2022, 11:11 am

Spinoff from the thread, "when people claim to remember stuff about you''

There's a well known story about a bochur learning in a yeshiva in EY. He had been an excellent bachur but at some point felt burnt out. He grew depressed and disillusioned with yiddishkeit. He eventually decided to leave yeshiva and frum life, and enlist in the IDF, but he didn't tell anyone.

On what was to be his last day, he walked into the beis medresh for his last tefilla. A random older bachur came over to him and fixed his jacket lapel which was turned up. A small gesture. But a gesture that had a profound impact on the struggling bachur. He realized from that gesture that someone cared enough about him to fix his lapel. He decided to stay around a little longer. Eventually, he overcame his depressed feelings and rediscovered his love for learning and yiddishkeit.

Years later, he tracked down and contacted the older bachur (now married) and invited him to his wedding. He wrote a personal note in the invitation asking him to come. The young man had no clue who the chassan was or why he was invited. But he went..and he heard the story of how he changed the trajectory of the other man's life by simply caring enough to turn down his jacket lapel.

We may have all been in situations where someone did something for us- something small and insignificant on their part- but it meant the world to us.

Sometimes we want to go back to that person and tell them, but for whatever reason, we can't.

Let's share those incidents here.
Either something someone did for you that made a big impact for you in that day. Or something that someone told you later made a huge impact on them, despite you maybe not even remembering doing that for them.

And maybe the rest of us can be inspired to reach out a little more to the one who may need it, because you just never know.