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You can do that.
Atsuko Saeki attended a college in California. At college, one of the hardest classes for her was physical education. “We played volleyball,” she said. “The other students were very good at it, but I wasn’t. I was shorter than the other students. I felt I wasn’t doing a very good job. To be honest, I was a lousy player.”
One afternoon, the physical education teacher told her to set the volleyball up for the other players on her team. “I was told that it was my job to hit the ball to them so that they could hit it over the net.”
It was too much for Atsuko Saeki. She was terrified. Then, a young man on her team sensed what she was going through. “He walked up to me : ’Oh, come on. You can do that,’ He said it in a nice way, but he was serious. Maybe he didn’t understand how happy those words made me feel. Four words : ‘You can do that.’”
She made it through the physical education class. She may have thanked the young man; she is not sure. Now five years have passed: she is out of college and back in Japan.
“I have never forgotten the words,” she said. “You can do that.’ When things are not going so well, I think of those words.”
“I’m sure he was just a nice guy,” she ssid. “I’m sure that he was the kind of guy who would say those words to anyone. He probably doesn’t remember saying the worda to me. But at the time it made me a big difference. I felt like crying with happiness.”
This, perhaps, is the lesson here. When you say something kind to a person, you really have no idea how long it will stick with the person.
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