A week ago I had a meeting at the Nashville's Civic Design Center, which is downtown on Second Avenue. The directions they gave me were so clear: Park in this garage, come out this door, head for the blue awning. And Nashville, I tried. But with all the construction going on down there, I was walking between barriers, following signs and watching the blue awning come closer, and then move farther away, and no matter which way I turned, I could not get there. And every time I looked down at my phone, I was later and later to my meeting and getting more flustered.
The frustration in being able to see the place you’re going, which in real life is just across the street, but not being able to get there? I was not in a good place.
More than three years since the Christmas Day bombing, the historic downtown district enters the home stretch of its rebuild
You know what happened? A guy working on the construction site came over and asked me where I was trying to get. I pointed to the blue awning and he kindly gave me directions how to navigate the maze. And I got to my meeting. Only slightly late.Â
He didn’t need to do that, obviously, and I’m sure he thought nothing of it. It took him 30 seconds, and it really saved my whole day. This, to me, is the tricky math of doing good. You do someone wrong and you get the gratification of seeing them unhappy. You get direct feedback in proportion to the feeling you put into it. But goodness isn’t like that. You do something that barely registers to you as a nice gesture — just a very small thing — and it turns someone else’s whole day around, but you may never see that or even get to know it. And when you’re on the receiving end of that goodness? When someone’s small gesture means the world to you? What do you do with that good feeling? Once you’ve said, “Thank you,” you can only either ignore it or figure that some day you’ll do something small and hope it makes a difference for someone else. But what do you do when a stranger working for the city does something nice? I did what any person would do: I got on Twitter/X and complained that hubNashville doesn’t have a place to leave compliments.Â
And you know what happened as of Friday? HubNashville (Davidson County's non-emergency service portal) now has a place to leave compliments. Do you know a sanitation worker who always waves to the kid on the corner and it’s so great? Are you glad someone cut back the bushes so the stop sign is visible again? Do you really like the new playground equipment at your park? Now there’s something you can do about it.
I, of course, immediately tried it out. I submitted: “The Second Avenue construction workers are doing a lot of great work making sure that lost people like me get to where they're going.” And it felt great. Simple, quick and pleasant.
We want to make Nashville a better place, but the ways we know to do it aren’t working
BUT THEN! I got a lovely email back, thanking me for my submission and hoping I have a nice weekend.Â
What even is this?! Am I getting old? Am I getting soft in my old age? I’m having this feeling in my chest that I, as a Gen-Xer, can barely put words to. Is this ... is this what the kids call civic pride? I had a very lovely exchange with government bureaucracy, and it made me feel good about living in Nashville.Â
I almost submitted a hub ticket complimenting hubNashville itself to see if I would get another pleasant response that I could submit a hub ticket expressing my happiness about and so on — just me going back and forth in an endless cycle of, “Have a nice weekend,” “I love hub compliments,” “Thanks, have a nice weekend,” etc. But I didn’t want to immediately ruin a good thing with my absurdist whimsy.
You all should try this! Maybe you don’t have a compliment that comes to mind. They also take suggestions. So if you have any good ideas about the city and you’re not sure where to put them, now there’s a spot.
