Small Acts of Kindness...blahblahblah

 

Small Acts of Kindness…blahblahblah

How many books and articles and blogs and sermons have been done about small acts of kindness? Too many to count? So many that it has lost its meaning, lost its impact and its “oomph?” It’s become a cheesy bumper sticker cliché, watered down, and used nonchalantly without intention of ever truly being carried out. I was running one day with a piece of paper in my hand, written directions because I was running through an area I wasn’t familiar with. (And because I’m old school, with the paper and all.) Once I got where I was familiar, I crumpled it up and carried it until I saw a trash can. I went a few steps out of my way and tossed it in, just as I passed a guy walking on the sidewalk. He looked at me with a puzzled expression. Now, for all I know his quizzical look could have been due to him considering a major decision he needs to make, or he was lost and looking for a certain house or road, or maybe he was curious as to why I paired zebra print pants with a striped shirt, who knows. But in my mind, he thought it was curious that someone out running would hold on to a piece of trash and throw it in a trash can, rather than just toss it on the ground somewhere along the way. Drive down most any road in America and it seems pretty evident Americans are not super worried about being bothered to wait for a proper trash receptacle. Now he may not have even noticed me or my good citizen behavior, but what if he did? What if it encouraged him to do something kind later? Which was witnessed by another person and it cheered them up to the point of doing something kind for someone else…and so on. A small act of kindness is just a cheesy bumper sticker until the world is changed.

You may think that your one little act of kindness is a meaningless drop in the bucket to the evil and selfishness and greed we see in the world around us. But the world didn’t become that way overnight. It became that way through specific, intentional decisions every single day made by millions of individuals. These last few years, especially through the pandemic, have affected so many of us, in both similar and unique ways. In many ways, a society already on the downhill slide toward a “me first” mentality had a fire lit under them, sliding on down that hill like Clark Griswald on his greased toboggan. For me, the most devastating aspect of the last seven years or so has been the upheaval of human compassion. Large groups of people with beliefs I naively didn’t think existed in large groups anymore crawled out from under rocks and became emboldened. We moved backward in civil rights, in respecting one another, in coming together for the greater good rather than just being out for ourselves. My loss of hope and respect for the humanity of people has been something I have grieved in real and overt ways. I found myself liking people in general less and less, and making assumptions about others with no proof or direct interaction or relationship…and I FELT ENTTLED TO DO SO. I think the secondary trauma of the pandemic, on a personal level, was how it changed me. A social worker who doesn’t like people? A Christian who doesn’t love others? Not who I want to be.

So, what to do when you are in a hole? Keep digging? No. You go back to basics. To what you know to be true and good. You take the kernel of truth from what has become a tired cliché and put the original meaning of it back to work; the part that caused it to catch on and become so cliché in the first place. Small acts of kindness are not small when they add up to a changed day, or life, or society. Will me picking up trash when I see it, or paying for someone’s food in line behind me, or smiling and complimenting a perfect stranger change the world? Will it stop Ukraine from being invaded or stop predators from preying on children or stop desperate people from stealing from others? No. Not directly. Since it was a slow, steady, downhill slide to get where we are, it will be a long, tough climb out. Probably generations, if ever at all, in all honesty. But if not us, who? If not now, when? To think of the small amount of effort I can put forward that could change generations to come, how could I not bother? Part of being a decent human is thinking beyond your own life, your own lifeTIME even. I have no doubt there are many, many other people out there like me, who have lost faith in people. And if a simple thing like picking up and throwing trash in a trash can could restore even a glimmer of that faith back for someone, why on God’s green earth would I not do it?