I had just returned from Atlanta, and I was tired.
Not just physically tired. I was tired in that peculiar way that comes from traveling, being with your children, trying to make sure everything is done, and then realizing that you haven’t had a single moment to simply unwind.
There had been no time for my own manicure or pedicure. No time to sit down and breathe. Work was waiting. I needed to look presentable, composed, ready.
So I went to the salon to make my hair.
And I knew what came with the territory.
Gossip.
There is always someone in the salon who has a story to tell, and someone else who is ready to listen. Normally, I keep myself out of it. I don’t gossip, and I don’t add to gossip.
But that day, I was tired.
So I decided to simply sit.
Listen.
Watch.
Laugh when something was funny.
And rest.
I wasn’t participating in the gossip. I was simply allowing myself to enjoy the company of another human being without feeling the need to correct, educate, or withdraw.
The woman doing my hair has always thought I was a little irritable. Sometimes she thinks I believe I am better than her.
I have told her before, “I am no better than you. God simply made us different.”
And that day, I explained what I meant.
I may be book-smart, but that doesn’t mean I am street-smart. I could spend years in school collecting degrees, but when I need my hair done, guess where my money goes?
To her.
I cannot stand in front of a mirror and create what she creates.
She can.
And perhaps she can do much more than that.
That made her smile.
Then I remembered something I had read many years ago—the idea that there are things the B and C students know that the A students sometimes don’t.
Because sometimes, the person who didn’t spend all their time chasing grades learns how to build something, sell something, create something, negotiate something, or turn a skill into a living.
And eventually, the A student may become the customer.
She became excited.
And then she began to tell me her story.
The businesses she had built.
The things she had done.
The different ventures she had tried.
How long she had been around.
How she had used her businesses—including hair making and other ventures—to educate her children, even sending them to places like Harvard and Oxford.
One child traveled. Another pursued a master’s degree.
And I sat there watching her.
Not correcting her.
Not competing with her.
Not comparing my achievements with hers.
I watched her exercise something beautiful:
pride in what she had built.
And for the first time, I saw something childlike in her.
There was innocence in the way she told her story.
She wanted to be heard.
She wanted someone to know that her life mattered.
That her work mattered.
That what she had contributed to her children mattered.
And I realized something.
People don’t always want you to tell them they are extraordinary.
Sometimes they simply want to know that you see them.
My mother taught me this lesson early.
She was a nurse, but being a nurse was not the only thing she knew how to do.
She made hair.
She made our clothes and did alterations.
She could make things with her hands.
She didn’t need to pay somebody else to do everything for us because she had learned how to do many things herself.
I wasn’t particularly interested in sewing.
But I found my own things.
I baked cakes.
I cooked.
And wherever I traveled, I could learn how to make the food of that place. Sometimes I would even create something in my head, only to discover later that somebody else had already given it a name.
And then there was drawing.
I had almost forgotten that I could draw.
Back in the day, I would draw for myself and my friends. My fine-art teacher would look at a drawing and say, “You all get zero. I know Joan did this for you.”
Writing was the same.
We would be given essays to write. Someone would ask me to help them.
The teacher would read it and say, “I know Joan wrote this.”
They knew my signature.
And that is when it struck me:
We all have a signature.
There may be thousands of hairdressers.
Thousands of writers.
Thousands of cooks.
Thousands of doctors.
Thousands of artists.
Thousands of people doing exactly what you do.
But nobody does it exactly the way you do it.
There are similarities.
There are common grounds.
There are people who have the same training, the same tools, the same opportunities.
But somewhere inside what you produce is a tiny thing that belongs only to you.
Your signature.
It may be so small that you don’t even recognize its value.
But somebody else may see it immediately.
That is what makes one person’s work different from another person’s work, even when they are doing the same thing.
It is why one hairdresser has customers who will travel across town just to sit in her chair.
It is why one writer’s words stay with you long after you close the book.
It is why one cook can take the same ingredients as everybody else and somehow make you say, “How did you do that?”
It is the signature.
And sometimes, we become so obsessed with degrees, titles, credentials and achievements that we forget the value of craft.
A degree is wonderful.
Education matters.
But education is not the end of human usefulness.
My mother taught me that a person should know how to do something with their hands.
Learn a craft.
Develop a skill.
Make yourself useful.
Because you never know when the thing you thought was small will become the thing someone else desperately needs.
And so, as I sat in that salon that day, I realized that I had gone there exhausted, expecting to be bombarded with gossip.
Instead, I witnessed something else.
I witnessed a woman remembering her own worth.
I gave her room to tell her story.
And in doing so, I discovered something about myself too.
Sometimes wisdom is knowing when to speak.
Sometimes it is knowing when not to.
And sometimes, the kindest thing you can do for another person is simply to sit there, listen to their story, laugh with them, and let them feel comfortable enough to be proud of what they have accomplished.
We all want to matter.
We all want what we have contributed to this world to mean something.
So mind your signature.
Whatever you do, do it so well, so honestly, so uniquely, that somewhere in your work there is a little mark that says:
“I was here.”
You never know who will notice it.
You never know whose life it will touch.
You never know who will need the very thing you thought was insignificant.
And you never know.
your tiny signature may be the very thing that makes your work unforgettable.
By Joan.A Roberts
