Have you ever had one of those days where everything that could possibly go wrong, goes wrong? Last week I was having one of those days. A car splashed water on me while walking to class, then I showed up to my eye appointment late and after the appointment I headed across the street to Starbucks before needing to run over to Walmart to grab some gifts. I had just ordered a Molten Hot Chocolate when I realized that I had forgotten my debit card back at my dorm. I asked if they could please cancel my order as I had forgotten my money. The women at the cashier then told me that my drink was on the house. I told her she could just cancel my order. I then happened to find some cash in my purse and asked to pay for my drink, and she still insisted that it was on the house.
Even though the kindness was over something as materialistic as a Starbucks drink, it got me thinking about all the lessons we were taught as a child. One of the first things your parents teach you is to be kind to people. Such as when you see someone with crutches, open the door for them, or if you see someone holding too much you offer to help carry some of it. When did we outgrow randomly being kind to people? When did we stop helping people, giving compliments, and doing activities just for the good of someone else with nothing in return for ourselves? The more we grow up the more we slowly start focusing on ourselves and our future ambitions, and forget about passing kindness forward to others.
I ask this of you the next time someone does something kind for you “pass it forward.” For every nice thing that happens to you do three more nice actions for other people. They don’t have to be large. After my Starbucks event, I went back to Starbucks and left a tip for the woman that gave me my drink, wrote a letter to a friend whom is currently in the Marines training, and asked someone who was eating lunch alone to eat with me.
Your acts of kindness do not need to involve money. Just take the time to think about someone else and act upon it in a favorable away. If we can all take a moment to do an act of kindness for someone else, slowly but surely it will become second nature to us again, like when we were children.
