Just as we’re all students throughout life, we’re all teachers. In fact, we learn best by offering what we desire for ourselves to as many individuals as we can, as frequently as we can. I’m thinking of an occasion once when three of my kids and I were seated at the food court of a mall here on Maui. As we were talking and enjoying our meals, a young boy stumbled, and the tray full of hamburgers and French fries he’d just purchased from McDonald’s went flying all over the floor. His parents immediately came to his rescue, and the manager of the restaurant good-naturedly replaced all of the food at no cost. The boy was embarrassed, but it all worked out fine…except that people were having to dodge what he’d dropped as they lined up for their purchases.

Neither the boy’s family nor the people working at the restaurant took any initiative to clean up this mess, which was actually a hazard to the crowd at the food court. I watched for a few moments, and then I took an empty tray and proceeded to pick up all of the food and dispose of it in the trash container. I returned to my seat, saying nothing about the incident.

About ten minutes later, a woman who’d observed this scene without my noticing came over to our table. To my teenagers she said, “You girls have just been given a lesson by your father—he has shown you by his actions what it means to be a caring, helpful citizen. No one else in this entire place thought of doing anything about that mess on the floor, but he did. He inspired me, and I hope that you were inspired by his actions, too.” She left, and my girls sort of smiled knowingly, since this was a rather normal thing for them to see.

The point of the story is to illustrate that one simple act of kindness and service that’s in alignment with our Source will do more to inspire others than lectures on the virtues of being a thoughtful citizen ever could. All I wanted to do was eliminate the potential peril of greasy burgers and fries on the floor—I wasn’t trying to inspire anyone—and that’s the heart of matters. When we elevate our consciousness above the level of ego, which says, “I didn’t spill that food, so it’s not my job to clean it up!” to the level that asks, “How may I serve?” we become an inadvertent source of inspiration to anyone who’s in the energy field of our spiritually based actions.