The Five Dollars You Forgot About

You noticed him again this morning. Same corner. Same cardboard sign. Same look past you, like he’d given up expecting anyone to stop.

You had five dollars in your pocket. Crumpled. Forgotten from last week’s coffee run.

You kept walking.

By the time you reached your car, something had shifted. Not guilt, exactly. Something quieter. A small pressure behind your ribs that wouldn’t explain itself.

You turned around.

You didn’t say anything remarkable. Just handed him the bill and told him to get something warm. He looked at you—actually looked—and nodded once. That was it.

You’ll never know what happened after. Whether he bought coffee or saved it for something else. Whether it mattered to him for five minutes or five hours. Whether he’s still there tomorrow.

But here’s the thing: you acted. Not because someone told you to. Not because you expected anything back. Just because the nudge was there and you finally listened.

This is how it works.

Not the grand gestures. Not the viral moments. Not the campaigns with metrics and reach and engagement rates. Just one person, noticing. One person, responding. One person, refusing to wait for someone else to fix what’s in front of them.

Maybe you’ve felt this before with words, too.

That email you almost didn’t send. The note you scribbled on your sister’s birthday card that made her cry. The story you started writing once, then closed the document because you convinced yourself it wasn’t good enough.

You told yourself it didn’t count. That real writing happens somewhere else—in publishing houses, on bestseller lists, in places reserved for people with credentials you don’t have.

But here’s what nobody tells you: the words that matter most are rarely the polished ones. They’re the ones paired with intent. The ones delivered without fanfare. The ones that reach one person at the exact moment they need to be reached.

You can’t plan for that. You can only show up and write.

Consider this: somewhere, right now, there’s a story only you can tell. Not because you’re the best writer. Not because you’ve mastered some technique. But because you lived it. Because you saw it. Because the thread connecting that experience to words runs through you and no one else.

If you don’t write it down, it disappears. Not dramatically—quietly. The details blur. The edges soften. And eventually, the thing that could have been preserved becomes one more piece of shared memory lost to silence.

Maybe it’s a family recipe with your grandmother’s handwriting in the margins. Maybe it’s the story of how your father talked his way out of a bad situation with nothing but his word. Maybe it’s just a moment you witnessed—small, unremarkable to anyone else—that taught you something you’ve carried ever since.

These don’t need a publisher’s approval. They need your attention.

You’ve probably told yourself you’ll get to it someday. When things settle down. When you have more time. When you feel ready.

Readiness is a myth. The nudge doesn’t wait for conditions to improve. It shows up when it shows up. And if you keep ignoring it, eventually it stops showing up at all.

You don’t need to change the world. You just need to respond to what’s in front of you.

Write the letter. Finish the story. Send the thing you’ve been sitting on.

Not because it’s perfect. Not because anyone asked for it. But because the words are yours and the moment is now.

That five dollars didn’t change the world. But it changed something—in him, in you, in the small, invisible space between intention and action.

Your words work the same way. They ripple outward in directions you’ll never trace. They land where you can’t see. They matter in ways you won’t measure.

The question isn’t whether they’re good enough.

The question is whether you’ll write them.

If this resonates, The Power of Authors explores what happens when you decide to find out. You can find The Power of Authors on Amazon: http://bit.ly/3K6o8AM. If you’d like an autographed copy: http://bit.ly/4pgmzjM

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