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The Magic of “No” Part III: The Woman Who Couldn’t

If you missed the beginning of this story you should visit this link to catch yourself up. Today we’ll be looking at the Woman’s perspective in a little story called “The Woman Who Couldn’t.”

The WOMAN kept calling the VOLUNTEER but she couldn’t ever actually get the VOLUNTEER into her house to help her move the cans out of the leaky room. While the VOLUNTEER would keep making promises he never kept them. He always had good reasons though… and she could understand.

But time went on… and on… and on. Every day the VOLUNTEER had “something come up” and was “terribly sorry” but couldn’t make it “until tomorrow.” Other citizens, who were in thecrowd that day cheering for the selfless efforts of the VOLUNTEER, saw the WOMAN’s real need and volunteered to help the WOMAN move the cans themselves but the WOMAN just said that “The VOLUNTEER promised he’d be here and I wouldn’t want to offend him by having someone else help me.”

So, every single day, the WOMAN fought off the rats with her pushbroom, carefully opened the rusty cans (making sure to not let the rust fall into her food), and became more and more frustrated by her situation and by the unkept promises of the VOLUNTEER. Each day she’d turn away people willing to help right then and there to wait for the VOLUNTEER who kept promising and promising to be there tomorrow.

The next day a particularly direct individual who had been cheering in the crowd so many weeks ago told the woman something very interesting. “I care about you and I care about this community and I want to help you today. I want to help you move those cans today so you can use the push broom for cleaning instead of defense and stop worrying about getting rust into your food. Will you please let me help you today?” The WOMAN didn’t know what to say. She was speechless. Finally, after a long silence, she told the individual to come back tomorrow at the same time. The WOMAN never expected what happened the next day.