As a road was being built, three boys clustered around, watching the work. Rather than ignoring them, one of the workers got off his machine, got vests for the boys, had them sit down, and explained to them what he and his friends were doing, in detail.

Small things like this – ten or fifteen minutes taken out of a day – make profound impacts.

At the most obvious level, the boys learned a good deal about roadwork. A level deeper, they were given a visceral understanding of adult work: how the men relied upon one another, trusted one another, cooperated with one another and shared their lives. It almost certainly became a complex image they would carry with them for a long, long time.

Below even that, they understood that they mattered… that a grown man valued them.

* * * * *

So now, before going back to the mundane, consider how you could do something like this: To recognize and respond to curiosity with knowledge and with visceral understanding… to demonstrate to some curious child that they matter.