The Gesture

Spring forward!

It's time to embrace longer days that stretch out like a piece of gum stuck to an unfortunate shoe.

I remember moving to a new school in grade six, and my teacher giving my class a speech about how we would all turn into hormonal animals once spring arrived. Mostly, she was talking about the age shift from 11 to 12 years old, but I stared at her terrified. She then ended her verbal crusade by telling us to buy deodorant.

Spring brings upon the debut of naked ankles, and the movement towards a better version of the self. With an increase in sunshine, comes an increase in friendliness, health and happiness. Even though Toronto is still freezing, if the evening brightness has put you in a better mood, I challenge you to do something nice for another person.


For example:

• Buy your coworker/person behind you a coffee
• Call your grandmother/grandfather
• Clean out your closet and donate to charity
• Give someone a compliment in real life, or leave a nice comment under someone's photo instead of a passive "like" 
• Share your favourite book with a friend 
• Pick up something you dropped over the winter (fitness class, a recipe that you tagged, a project that never got started because Netflix + Winter = death of productivity) 

Last weekend, my mentee from GEM brought me a new notebook at our monthly meeting (as pictured above). Her gesture brightened up my day, as she knows I love and collect notebooks.

Everyday the inundation of horrifying world news can make anyone feel like staying under the covers, but this week, choose to pay it forward.

There's no quota on positivity.