It was a small kindness.
"Here you go, Miss Mimi," said the barista I would see every morning on my way to work. The barista that I would chat with about anime. The barista whose name I learned and whom I'd ask about their classes.
The barista handed me my drink with a smile. I looked at the cup. It wasn't what I ordered. It was bigger, better. She had upgraded my drink for free.
I didn't ask for it. I didn't hint around. She just did it, not expecting, not even accepting a reward. She did it because she could, and because, maybe, she wanted to make another human being's day a little brighter in whatever small way she could.
And it did. It smuggled a little light into my dim and dreary heart. I started my day with a smile. And that smile buoyed me through a grinding day at work.
It was a small kindness. But to me, it made a big difference.
It's these small gestures, the ones that maybe you think are trivial or inconsequential, that happen in mundane moments on routine days, that your memory doesn't take note of, and that the world ignores, too. These are the things that define our world, that nudge it this way or that. These are the drops of water that silently shape the stone of civilization into art or beat it carelessly into useless rubble. It's these drops of kindness (or cruelty or hate or disrespect) that help us feel safe (or not), that encourage us to believe in the best (or the worst) of humanity.
In other words, we can only create a kind, peaceful world by raining kindness down every day in every moment. Even in those moments we think don't matter. Even to people we don't know.
It may just be a small kindness, but imagine a world full of them.
Isn't that the kind of world we want to live in?
YOU ARE READING
The Sh#% Your Parents Should Tell You
Non-FictionYour parents probably tell you a lot of things like study hard, get a good job, be a decent human being, take out the goddamn garbage for christ's sake. But what they won't tell you are the ugly (and slightly less ugly) truths about life that, if...
