Our young waitress at lunch the other day seemed overly concerned about everything being just right. It wasn’t irritating or intrusive. It didn’t interrupt the conversation. It wasn’t the feeling of being rushed through lunch to open up the table for another waiting customer. It was a genuine interest in doing a good job, but she didn’t seem at ease about it.
As I said, she didn’t distract from the conversation and that was the main point of the lunch. My friend and I had both served on local committees for evaluating charitable requests, and we were comparing notes about the various tools we used to make sure those gifts met certain standards. You would have recognized all the words – accountability, impact, outcomes, overhead, sustainability. My friend may be the most rational person I know and his analytical questions make him a rare asset to donors and foundations.
When she brought the check, I asked her my usual question, “How long have you been working here?”
“Was something not right? I’ve only been here a couple of months,” she replied. It wasn’t defensive. It was nervous.
“No, everything was fine. Actually, more than fine. I was just curious. Are you going to school?”
“Well, yes. I have a baby and I’m going to school at the community college. This is my second job as I also work a shift at a dress shop. I want to be a nurse.”
She laid down the check, and I gave her the credit card. My friend asked if he could take care of the tip. He pushed a bill across the table that was far larger than the tip required and said, “It’s the smallest I have.” I knew that wasn’t true. but there was something in the way he said it that made me know not to question him. I matched his tip, and we tucked it in the folder behind the receipt and left.
We didn’t talk about impact and sustainability afterwards. We talked about the gift we had both received at lunch. Our cash tip was not going to change her life or make her dependent on us. We were not going to evaluate how she used it or if her overhead ratio was appropriate to her program expense. It was not pity or being swayed by emotion. I’m not sure I have a word for it other than what Ecclesiastes (perhaps the least happy book in Scripture) calls “joy.” It was a pure exchange of gifts.
My father would always distinguish between curiosity and genuine interest. Curiosity is just that. It is sweeping up another tidbit. It is self-focused. It is mere accumulation. Interest on the other hand is engaging in the conversation or subject or life of a person. Maybe that is what happened the other day at lunch.
Idle curiosity for a brief moment became interest in the life of another person…and both my friend and I were surprised by joy.