I am in the process of trying to sum up all that my (almost) 40 year old brother has meant to me over the years. It is difficult to say the least to express that much love and admiration and appreciation into words. To me, it almost seems as if there really aren't words in the english language that can justify my thoughts and feelings, and so I resist. I resist writing them down because what if they can't or don't explain well enough. The words I know aren't perfect, so I resist writing them down, sending them, expressing them.
I see this practice of resistance everyday in my work. We resist taking risks, we resist writing thank you notes, we resist trying new things, we resist writing a Case that actually means something to someone, we resist - everything. We WANT to do it... we WANT to see the results, but we don't want to be responsible if the outcome is less than desirable.
Well guess what, if we don't do it, we will never know if it worked. If we don't send the letter, write the words, try something new, we will never know why something didn't work and how to do it better. If I don't write this letter, my brother will never know how I feel or what I think. So you have to weigh which would be more harmful... my words being somewhat inadequate or my brother thinking that I don't care as much as I do.
So the next time you are wondering if you should call your donor to say thank you, send a personal note, stop by to let them know what is going on... or simply show your appreciation, do not resist! A little goes a long way....
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