Random Acts of Kindness

It was supposed to be a random act of kindness. I knew my cross the street neighbor was away on vacation and his grass needed cutting. So I cut it. For the several more years we lived across the street from one another, he kept asking “How often is random anyway?”

I was reminded of this earlier in the week when an interesting challenge came up. P.J. Jordan stopped by for a chat and asked how we might get people to connect with one another. For P.J. its often a hug. She hugs a stranger or two each day. “I always asks first,” she notes. “And I am amazed at the response I get.” I give a hug away and find that I get much more than I am getting.

Despite advances in communication technology, we live ever more distant lives. Phones, faxes, and emails could bring us closer together, but that can’t equal the power of human touch. Staying in touch and getting a hug are not the same thing. Not even close.

Bridging the gap between other people is startlingly easy. Try holding the door for the person entering the store after you. You will be amazed. Even the simplest act makes a difference. Two disconnected lives share a moment of connection. It costs nothing.

P.J. refers to “cold pricklies” and “warm fuzzies.” Someone who seem like a cold prickly personality may actually be a warm fuzzy in disguise.

A Methodist pastor I know extols the virtues of connecting with your serve in a restaurant. Really connecting. If he or she is willing to talk, he says you can find a lot about what is going on in his or her life. He says the stories will sometimes break your heart, sometimes warm your soul, but they will always surprise you. All of this drama taking place and you would never know it. But by asking, you can lighten someone’s burden, if only for a short period of time.

Some people see the glass as half empty. Some as half full. Others just say, one way or another the waitress isn’t getting a tip. But this without knowing what she is going through at work and at home. Forget optimistic or pessimistic, try making a real connection. It’s random. You can’t make the whole day better for that person, but you can make a small difference and that may be all it takes to turn someone else’s day around.

I know a retired chaplain who works not too far away bagging groceries for a large supermarket. He considers this his ministry. And the smile, the thoughtful words of encouragement are how he lives into that ministry. He also makes it a point to pray for every person who passes through the checkout where he works. No one knows this is his ministry. Or do they? Perhaps there is a reason why folks prefer being in the line where he’s bagging their items.

How many encounters do you have in a typical day? More than you might first think. There are the people in line with you at a store. The folks you pass in a parking lot coming or going. The person next to you at a red light. The list just gets longer of the people whose day you can effect for the better. A smile works wonders. A kind word is even better. But how about letting that Mom with the baby she’s trying to handle get ahead of you at the grocery store? It adds two minutes to your time on line, but decreases her stress in greater measure.

You are smart enough to be way ahead of me and PJ by now. It’s about using small encounters, the briefest of exchanges, to create a real connection with someone else.

The movie that was popular some years back put it best with its title Pay It Forward. In the movie, a boy was assigned by a teacher to come up with a way to change the world for the better. He decided that if he would do nice things for a few people and ask them to pay it forward (instead of feeling they owed him) then the world would change. During the course of the film, lives we altered as people looked for ways to help out another stranger to repay someone for a kindness done to them.

Want to make Camden County a better place to live? The answer is easier than you think. It’s just a few dozen smiles and a couple of hugs away. As long as you pass those hugs and smiles along each day. But that is perhaps thinking too small. For if we really began to pay it forward, to share a kind word, a smile or a hug with people we don’t know, the change would reach well beyond this corner of Georgia. Before the random acts of kindness had worked there way around, there would be few people left untouched. The kindnesses shared would reveal how we are already connected.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church.)