How do you find kindness in unexpected places? You look for it.
My husband and I sat at a restaurant's outside table eating our lunch and enjoying the late afternoon sunshine. A well-dressed and tidy man on a bicycle wove around the parking lot, rode past the drive-up order window, swung by the walk-up order window, and then headed off into the parking lot again. He half-sang, half-mumbled nonsense as he rode. The owner and a young man I think was her son ran out of the building and called after the bicyclist. I couldn't hear what they said. I assumed they were shooing him away. He was odd. They probably didn't want him spooking the customers.
A few minutes later the bicyclist returned. He rode up to the order window and stopped. He spoke broken sentences but was able to ask what they wanted. The owner went out a side door and joined the bicyclist. They were just a few feet away.
She said, "I'm glad you came back. I have these for you." She handed him three cassette tapes.
He took a deep, excited breath and his speech became more garbled. It was clear that his message was gratitude.
The shop owner smiled at him. "I'm glad you can use them."
The bicyclist bobbed his head, muttered, beamed, and then rode away. The owner went back inside.
I spoke to her through the walk-up window. "I just saw something wonderfully kind happen and I want to say thank you. That was really lovely."
Now it was her turn to beam. "He's a sweet man," she said. "I don't know his story. I think he was in an accident. His head is messed up. He has a tape player in the back pack behind his seat on the bike. He has only one tape, which he plays over and over. He told me last week how hard it is to find cassette tapes now." She shrugged. "We have lots of tapes. I wanted him to have some."
I thanked her again for her kindness, saying that it had clearly delighted the bicyclist and it had brightened my day to watch the interaction. She said that it really touched her that I'd said something.
Kindness has a way of multiplying, magnifying. Being kind is good for our hearts. Receiving kindness lifts our spirits. Observing kindness-really seeing it-brightens our world.
When you see kindness, acknowledge it. Say something if possible. Or smile in recognition. Magnify the kind act by reflecting it.
Then pass it on.
Jerilyn Marler is a freelance writing coach and editor with over 35 years of experience. Over the years she has written three books about WordPerfect for MIS:Press, a subsidiary of Henry Holt Publishers; edited dozens of technical books; edited a children's book, a medical text book, and a book on divorce at the same time and managed to stay sane; and has written/edited end user documentation and marketing materials for more products than she can count. She recently launched her own publishing company, Quincy Companion Books, and has published two books that help military families cope with the challenges of deployment separation.
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