Do-Gooder

Here’s a funny story…or maybe it’s more irony than humor. As I was sitting on my patio yesterday afternoon I noticed the waves were kind of big and really cool and they were creating huge white caps way out in the ocean. It was fun to watch and quite beautiful. But then I noticed something that wasn’t so beautiful, my neighbors Fire Ring.

Almost every home along the shore in Capo Beach has their own Fire Ring and since our home is a duplex there are two matching Fire Rings out front. My neighbor isn’t here very often because his main home is in Scottsdale and over the last few months most of the bricks that support his Fire Ring have been knocked over and broken. It was looking pretty bad and since I know that he will be coming out for the summer pretty soon, I decided to get off my lazy butt and go rebuild his Fire Ring.

I broke out a shovel, a sand rake and some spare bricks and got started. After a couple of hours I was finished and his Fire Ring was now much sturdier and stronger. I even relocated it in a few feet closer to his home so it wouldn’t be so susceptible to the bigger waves that sometimes wash in over the sand. As I stood back and surveyed my work I mentioned something to my wife. I said, “You know what, I messed up. I made Bill’s Fire Ring look better than ours!” She laughed and said I did a good job and that they both looked great.

At 9:30 last night, we noticed the sound of the ocean getting really loud. All of a sudden huge waves started crashing down on our beachfront. Within minutes water was rushing over the sand and slamming against our sea wall. By 10:00pm the water flooded our patio and was threatening our home. I threw on clothes and waded out to save our patio furniture and in the process got soaking wet and covered with seaweed and saltwater.    

This morning when I woke up, I am proud to report that my neighbor’s Fire Ring withstood the storm and looked just great. However, my own Fire Ring was absolutely destroyed. As I stood there looking out at the seaweed floating on our patio, the beach littered with ocean residue and the bricks from our Fire Ring scattered all over the beach…all I could do was laugh at the irony of it. You could make the argument that I wasted time working on my neighbor’s Fire Ring when I should have been working on my own, but I look at it a little differently. Yes, I could have rebuilt my own Fire Ring and that would have felt good…but doing something good for my neighbor felt a whole lot gooder!

 

Before the Storm

 

After the Storm

Being good is commendable, but only when it is combined with doing good… is it useful.

~ Anonymous