I just stumbled upon a thread in which people were discussing the nicest thing a stranger has done for them.
It was the most heartwarming, faith in humanity restoring thing I've seen in recent times. Most of these things were such small, inconsequential random acts of kindness too which i think is what made them so meaningful.
I thought it might be good if we started something like that here! It's been such a whirlwind of a year - making it so easy to get bogged down in all the sadness, ignorance, negativity and the outright stupidity at times so it's just nice to have the occasional reminder that there's still plenty of good in the world!
I'll begin with mine:
Many years ago when my children were little, I was young, broke and had a broken down car. Not one to ask for help, I optimistically (or naively) took my kids on the train to go grocery shopping. In the supermarket, i over estimated how much my skinny arms could carry home but alas, i struggled in the train as best i could with 4 heavy ass bags of food and 3 kids between the age of 2 and 4. Of course it all went to hell after I got off the train!
Our house was about a 7 minute walk from the train station, 2 year old decided to just give up on life and refuse to walk so i had to carry her in one arm and my 4 bags in the other. The other 2 kids decided it was a great time to start fighting and moving at a snails pace. We were about half way home and i put everything on the ground for a minute before my shoulders dislocated, the kids were crying, i wasn't far off having a breakdown myself when an older gentleman pulled over.
I was fully prepared to have him start carrying on because we'd taken so long to get across the road (everywhere I'd been that day i was made to feel like a giant pain in the ass so my immediate thoughts were that was going to continue here). Not the case at all!
This man insisted to carry my bags home for me, he chatted to my children and cheered them up, he talked about how much he missed his own grandchildren who lived overseas and he just all round exuded genuine goodness.
It's been at least 15 years since that day and it will stay with me for the rest of my life.
This man thought nothing of taking 5 minutes out of his day to help someone out, it meant more to me than he'll ever know.
3 Replies
I look too capable for people to help. When my car broke down, I pushed it to the side of the road myself.
I’m usually the stranger.
For me, it was someone stopping me to tell me how good of a job I was doing with my son. I had been having a hard time with him, we were in the middle of getting a diagnosis and I just struggled going out in public with him. Everyone stopped and stared or made comments about controlling my child.
I was JUST holding it together this one day and a lady stopped to tell me just how good of a job I was doing with my son and he was a gorgeous young boy. I got in my car and just cried and cried the whole way home.
Priceless, but meant the world to me.
Sometimes the nicest gestures are from people we don't know , over those we 'do' know.