Last week, I got a late-night call from a friend now living in the US, whom I had not spoken to in 16 years. We finally connected after a month of planning.
He said, “After all these years, there are so many memories to recall, but what comes instantly to him about me is how kind I was to him in school when he had a tough time dealing with bullies”.
He mentioned what Maya Angelou once said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.
To hear all this, it made me feel good about myself. However, I can’t take the full credit for this.
I attribute this entirely to my mother, who would remind me almost on a weekly basis that ‘I should never make fun of people’. It got inside my head so deeply that sometimes I would come to the rescue of my friends when they were being bullied.