It’s Valentine’s Day and it seemed like a good time to share a story about ways of thinking from a children’s book. Sometimes a change of thought can completely change our lives …quickly. Which direction will that change of thought lead us – toward opportunities or further limitations on ourselves? Mr. Hatch has a lot to teach us on the topic.
Episode 32 – Show Notes
- Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch (book) – https://amzn.to/37pX8Dc
- Shout out to Chrissi Anderson Richards and Shirley Huestis
Episode 32 – Transcript
This is Rebecca Clark. Episode 32. Feeling Loved
This Podcast is for anyone that knows they haven’t yet found and offered up their best work but are compelled to seek it out and do it. Are you ready to move your desk?
This is a bonus episode because I wanted to share a message with you on Valentine’s Day specifically because there’s a book that I love, and it talks about Valentine’s Day. It’s a Children’s book, but as I’ve mentioned before, good Children’s books are also intended for adults that are reading them. So this book is Somebody Loves You, Mr Hatch. The Story by Eileen Spinelli and Chrissy Anderson Richards gave me this book over 20 years ago, and she is a wonderful person. She is always kind and happy and giving and compassionate, and she was my roommate for a short period of time and gave me this book as a gift, and I loved it. And then it kind of gathered dust on my bookshelf for a few years until my son was born and I started reading it to him, and he loves it, and I continue to love the messages in it. Who is Mr Hatch? Mr Hatch is this man that kind of fades into the background. He is very methodical with his day. He’s tall and thin and doesn’t smile. He gets up at the same time every day and it’s 6:30 a.m. He would leave his brick house and go the eight blocks to the shoe lace factory where he worked. And every day for lunch, he sat by himself in a corner, eating his cheese and mustard sandwich and drinking his cup of coffee and didn’t interact with anyone, even when he made his stops after work at the newspaper stand and at the grocery store to buy meat for supper. And then he’d read his paper with supper, take a shower and go to bed early, and people would say about him. He keeps to himself. So, that’s Mr Hatch. One Saturday near Valentine’s Day, he gets a surprise knock at the door, and it’s the postman delivering him a very large box shaped like a heart. So if you can imagine one of those large heart safe chocolate boxes from the store and times it by five in size, that’s what you get. Huge box and as he ripped the paper open, a little note fell out and it said, Somebody loves you And so he’s a bit in shock because he doesn’t know anyone. He lives alone and he takes it in his house and he puts it on the table in the living room and he tries to kind of clean the living room. But the entire time, he’s like now who would send this to me? Who? And then he starts having this thought over and over in his head. Somebody loves you. Ooh, somebody loves you. Ooh, somebody loves you And then he thinks I have a secret admirer and all of a sudden he completely changes from this man that hides behind the scenes and is alone to almost giddy. And he’s clapping and he’s laughing and he’s dancing. And he just is excited at the prospect of having a secret admirer and somebody that loved him Well, because he didn’t know who it was. You know, this lets his mind go in all these different directions. But, what also happens is he changes his clothes and puts on this tie that attract some attention. He goes to the neighborhood smiling and he’s waving and he’s interacting with people. And they’re kind of taken aback by the man who stays to himself because all of a sudden he’s this gregarious outgoing person, and he goes to work the next day and he takes that huge box of chocolates and he shares it with everyone. So, he’s not alone in his corner. He’s out there sharing with everyone, and when he goes on his evening routine of getting his newspaper, he doesn’t just get the newspaper. He interacts with the man of the newspaper stand and notices. He doesn’t look quite well, and he asks about it and finds out the man is sick. So Mr Hatch offers to watch the newspaper stand while the man goes and gets a doctor’s appointment. And he offers at the grocery store after that errand because the man looked worried because his daughter hadn’t derived from school. So Mr Hatch offers to go find a little girl and bring her to the grocery store so the man doesn’t have to worry. So he’s engaging in completely different behaviors because he’s thinking somebody loves him and he doesn’t know who it is and He’s so excited and flattered. He goes home and wife. Follow the evening routine. Why not make brownies and lemonade and invite the neighbors over me? And this guy has had a complete turnaround rather fast. And so it shows that, you know, over time we don’t know how much time this is. A week or two or three, Mr Hatch becomes a fixture in his neighborhood, in a fixture at work. People want to be around him. Kids want to be around him. They want him to read books. They want to invite him to their house. He’s inviting people to his house. They’re all hanging out on his front porch. He has a completely different life. Then he had weeks before, before he got a box of chocolates in the mail from somebody. Well, one day, while he’s engaged in his new experiences, the postman comes back to the door and says, Mr Hatch, do you remember a package I delivered to you a little while ago? Said I delivered it to the wrong address, and at that point, Mr Hatch starts to realize that wait a second. This package was never intended for him, he said. Well, I still have it, but I only have an empty box and he brought the empty box things like Wait a second. There’s also this little note and he brings a little Somebody loves you. Note. And it’s at this point in the story where we find out how much meaning Mr Hatch has given to this box of chocolates because the next morning, what does he do? He wakes up and he follows his old routine and his old behaviors. Overnight, he reverts to the prior Mr Hatch. He wakes up the picture, shows this head down as he’s walking to work, goes toe work, has his mustard and cheese sandwich, sits by himself, and after work, he goes to the newsstand, doesn’t interact, just gets his newspaper, just gets his turkey wing. And he didn’t talk to anyone on the way home. He didn’t invite anyone over for brownies and had his shower and went to bed. Now it’s interesting about this to me is that this person had gone through this significant change and actually had more people in his life, and he had reached out to them. They were open to bring him in immediately and become part of his life. And so he had all this evidence. Now that he’s loved from most of us watching the situation would say, Aye, this guy is completely loved by his neighbors, by his coworkers by kids walking on the street. He’s just this incredible person, and yet this time, the box of chocolates, it’s taken from him, and so he realizes that no one actually was a secret. Admire it first, but he completely forgets about all the experiences he’s had from that thought. Somebody loves me, and he’s gone completely back to a different thought of Nobody loves me. It’s completely discouraged. And so often in life we assign so much meaning to that box of chocolates situation a straight box in this case that didn’t even belong to him because in his excitement, when he received the package, he didn’t even look to see whose name was on the box. Why would you look if the postman brought it and put it in your hands? You’re assuming it’s the right person at that point and what I love about this story, as I learned more and more about our thoughts and our feelings, it’s a perfect demonstration of how we make so many things in our lives mean something. There could have been someone that had the postman comes their door, that big box of chocolates and said, This is crazy. Who’s the weirdo that sent this to me? Because maybe they’ve had prior experiences where they assume someone’s out to get thumb or some stalker was after them or something, and they could take a completely different meaning from this box of chocolates. Mr. Hatch assigned an awful lot of meaning to it because he completely changed everything once he had the thought. Somebody loves me. The hard part was that after having all of these experiences that most of us would think for demonstrations of love and friendship, he completely went the other direction. It was like there is no in between thought between somebody loves me and nobody loves me. And so he was a very extreme example. Now, thankfully, in this case, I kind of forgot to mention that people started to wonder rather quickly what happened to Mr Hatch and the postman figured out. Wait a second has something to do with this box of chocolates and talk to everyone. And that Saturday morning. They all arrived at his front porch and they had a big sign saying, Everybody loves Mr Hatch and they were there to show that they actually really did love him. And so how wonderful for him that this mistake happened in his life because it allowed him to change a thought that he could have changed any day before then to think that somebody could love him and they were able to meet this man that stayed to himself and find out that he was actually a pretty amazing person. So lots to think about with stories like the’s. I’m kind of reminded of the stories of hiding when I talk about this. How many of us air hiding and blaming others and saying Nobody loves me when, really, maybe we just haven’t bothered to think that maybe somebody does love you, and you can get out there and act in different ways and make small contributions to one person or two people and allow other people in. But on this Valentine’s Day, when each person listening to this assigns a different meaning to the holiday, I’d encourage you to have the thought somebody loves me or somebody could love me or somebody does care about me. And how does that make you feel? And I hope that you can feel a little better. And in some cases I hope you feel like Mr Hatch, where you get a little bit giddy and laugh and dance and clap your hands and then go decide to do something for yourself. Maybe that’s a first step or for someone else in your life. Or maybe even be not a secret admirer, maybe, but someone that leaves a secret gift to say thank you to someone. Why not do that instead of having the thought? Nobody loves me on Valentine’s Day or is one of my friends called it Cupid Passover. And when I was single, we had a few Cupid Passover parties, is one of my friends. Shirley Huestis planned great parties for this day because there’s no need to be alone or negative on it. Unless that’s what you wanted. You could gather with a group of people and have some fun and just appreciate other human beings. So just some thoughts that were triggered by a Children’s book and Valentine’s Day, and I hope you make it a great one. And guess what? I’m grateful that you listen to this podcast and I love you for it. So somebody does care about you. Enjoy the day. Thanks for listening to the show today. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d write a review and share the show with your friends, Sign up for a weekly nudge at move your desk dot com. See you next Monday.
