The Importance of Kindness and Small Gestures!

Kindness matters!

We are often busy with our worlds, caught up on our own eternal "personal treadmills" of things we must get done. It also means that we sometimes end up walking through our lives in a sort of trance, not necessarily noticing everything going on around us.

In some cases, we have also been deeply "conditioned" to mind our own business, because "the word is" that the world is a dangerous place, and there's no telling how we might get taken advantage of.

And so we keep to ourselves. Unnoticed. Not noticing.

In a somewhat distant past, I used to do most of my grocery shopping late at night. The supermarket across from my apartment was less crowded, and when there was less traffic on the 6-lane city street the walk over there was also less dangerous.

I'm a people-watcher, and over time I got somewhat familiar with the evening staff, as well as certain customers who also seemed to have a preference for evening shopping.

The evening assistant manager — and often cashier on duty — was a young woman from Hawaii, who was efficient, quiet and soft spoken but always had a slightly shy smile for everyone. She had that rare quality of someone who's just a genuinely sweet and caring soul.

One evening, I was in line behind another "regular," a retirement-age gentleman who walked with a cane. I noticed that when Leilani (the checker) handed him back his change, she held his hand between both of hers for a few seconds while smiling her quiet smile at him. Without getting too "woo-woo" about it, it was like the old man was momentarily energized by the brief exchange.

When it was my turn, I noticed Leilani had tears in her eyes as she rang up my groceries.

She noticed me noticing and shared that the old man was a widower living alone, and his late wife had also been Hawaiian and that Leilani had reminded him a lot of his late wife, when she was young. Likely, her brief touch was the only human touch of kindness he ever got these days... and affording him a brief moment of "connection" to his broken heart felt like the least she could offer him.

Needless to say, I also had tears in my eyes when I left the store...

Maybe six months later I noticed that Leilani was no longer at that supermarket. And the elderly gentleman... he also no longer seemed to be visiting.

I have no idea what happened to either of them... but neither of them have ever left my memory.

Not connected — exactly — maybe a couple of years later I was driving home from and overnight job at a local computer manufacturer and I was thinking about that particular moment of kindness, reflecting on our humanity, when I noticed a young woman pulled off to the side of the road holding her baby while looking at the flat tire on her car.

This was before the age of mobile phones so I pulled up at a respectful distance behind her and asked if I could help her, or change her tire for her, or give them a ride somewhere. Rather than being frightened, she seemed relieved and allowed me to put on her spare after which I followed her to a service station where they could fix things properly.

She didn't say much, but the look in her eyes did... and that was enough.

It cost me nothing but a little time, but the result was that someone's day immediately was better, rather than a complete mess.

Kindness matters; small gestures matter.

Sometimes we fall into the mistaken belief that we must endeavor to do something BIG in order to make any difference in our world. And we feel overwhelmed by that prospect, so we instead choose to pass on by and stay engaged in the pursuit of only our own thing.

At other times, we fall into the mistaken belief that the world is evil and filled only with bad actors whose intent is to hurt and exploit others, and that anything we do to the contrary will be meaningless and go unnoticed and unappreciated.

We forget our humanity. We forget that it actually doesn't take that much to make a difference, and sometimes just a tiny act of kindness can make a huge difference in someone else's life... in ways we cannot even imagine.

Maybe we let our egos get in the way because we live in this increasingly self-involved and narcissistic world where people often won't do anything unless it can be converted into a social media event; extra followers on Instagram.

Truly seeing and responding to life from the heart required us to step outside the trance and actually be here.

Do a small kind thing for somebody, today!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? Have you ever been on the receiving end of someone's unexpected kindness? How did it make you feel? Do you do kind things for others, with no expectation in return? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.03.05 18:17 PST
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