Took the hotel elevator downstairs to forage for far-from-home Monday coffee and a bite before heading out for an afternoon workshop with a Jedi High Council of new clients. Been stressing for days about the gathering, which represented our one and only opportunity to make a good first impression with about a dozen higher ups.

Grabbed a plain black coffee (did the trick) and a yogurt from their cooler (not that great), and went back to toss my empties in the garbage, when I spied a small bowl of bananas on the counter behind the person working. Likely owing to my pre-caffeinated state, I’d not seen the bowl when I’d ordered.

“Ooh, may I have a banana, please?” I asked the person who’d waited on me a couple minutes ago, explaining unnecessarily that I’d not seen them when I’d first ordered. She turned, walked over to the bowl and reached to grab one.

Then she pulled her empty hand back. 

On second thought … 

“I’ll let you pick,” she said. 

Idabeen fine with whatever she’d picked, but, um, OK. 

So I walked around the corner of the counter to where the bowl sat. Sized up the options, grabbed the biggest one automatically, figuring that hotel bananas come at a price and all cost the same, so bigger was the best choice. Really didn’t give it a second thought. 

In the couple seconds while I was sizing up the options in the bowl, the person behind the counter said, “Some people prefer smaller ones, some bigger. Where I come from the smaller ones are much sweeter. 

“In Sudan, we let the monkeys have the bigger ones.”

“Really?” I asked, as the corners of my mouth propped themselves into a curious smile. 

“Yes … the smaller ones are sweet … like candy,” she said, as her face registered a memory of the taste. “We rush to pick the small ones before the monkeys can get to them. But we leave the bigger ones, and let the monkeys have those.” 

In my life I have never bothered to consider any distinction of taste in the relative size of a banana.

“I assume they are a different variety than what we have here,” I said. She said she didn’t know for sure as she asked me my room number to apply the charge. I didn’t either, but found myself needing to know, so later looked it up.  Turns out that the dwarf cavendish is the primary banana grown in Sudan (among the 50 varieties that grow there), which is, in fact, smaller than the commercial variety we are used to here. 

She began to list the myriad ways they cook with bananas back home … frying, roasting, baking.  “Oh, and the plantains,” she continued. 

As she allowed herself a few small seconds of reverie, I found myself walking over to the bowl again. 

I put the big one back in exchange for a smaller one. 

“Ah, Mr. William … you were just here,” she said, looking at her screen and seeing my previous order. I could read on her face she was pausing for another second thought before deciding on something. 

“I give you the banana,” she said. 

Of course, she simply meant the smaller one I had already started to peel. 

But, as I’ve thought about it, the true gift was in the form of her language. In the brief span of an otherwise mundane transaction that barely lasted a minute — one of the hundreds each of us would encounter in our unfolding day — she had re-presented the whole idea of something that I had heretofore taken for granted. 

I give you … the banana.

Since she had addressed me by name, I asked hers in return. “Yoo-me” she said, spelling it for me: U-M-I. 

I thanked her for her generosity, by which I meant her spirit. 

As I walked from the counter I knew that I would never look at a banana the same way again. And that when I do, I’ll think of Umi.

And how she made my world bigger by sharing from hers. 

I mean, much, much bigger in ways that I am only beginning to appreciate. 

Like the convicting possibility that my default OS may be born of a scarcity mindset … whose first instinct is to grab for the biggest and the most for me … rather than what might actually be for the best for reasons that may be far beyond my limited understanding. Me and the monkeys are gonna need some time chewin’ on that big banana. 

In the meantime … I will content myself with the wisdom inherent in Umi’s simple act of kindness.

That the scale of far-from-home Mondays is indeed relative. 

And that there is a sweetness to be found in small things. 

Bananas, yes … and in the tiniest of moments, buried deep in the otherwise mundane bowls of our everyday encounters.

(on second thought, draws empty hand back)