i was looking at some of the old books on my bookshelf in my room, and I came across my old dinotopia books. You know, the ones where there is a civilization on some hidden island where talking dinosaurs and humans coexist and their energy source comes from these things called sunstones. And there was always this one particular quote that has for some reason or another always stuck with me
even one raindrop raises the sea
and it makes me think about how even the smallest act of kindness can perpetuate a torrent of good in the world. Do you remember that commercial from years ago where some business man on a crowded metropolitan sidewalk prevents a distracted pizza delivery boy from stepping into the street and getting hit by a passing car, and this grateful individual, touched by this simple act of kindness, helps out another random stranger with a simple mundane task that people would otherwise pay little or no attention to, but then these strangers do simple random acts of kindness for others, and eventually one woman who was reached by this chain prevents a business man reading the newspaper from stepping into the path of a car in an intersection. The same man who stopped the boy with the headphones. I'd like to think that these simple things do find a way of coming around full circle, that the world is actually a good place and that people have the potential to make someone else's day by doing the seemingly unimportant things in life. All too often we pass up these small opportunities to hold the door open for the people entering the same room as us, or to pick up the dropped paper off the ground, or hold the elevator for the person who you know will make it if they are just given those extra 3 seconds to get there, or even to smile and genuinely say "thank you" to the barista at Starbucks.
I remember hearing a story about one man who committed suicide. We all know that life would have to be pretty terrible for someone to think that they had nothing to live for. In this one instance, a man who lived in San Francisco walked something like an hour to the Golden Gate Bridge and jumped off. The police who investigated found a note written in his apartment. It said that the man was tired of a mean and uncaring world, and that if one person smiled at him on his way to the bridge he wouldn't have jumped.
I don't want to live in a world where people have to be afraid of strangers. Of course it is everyone's right to be entitled to their own opinions and to be watchful of where they put their trust in others, but just because the man standing on the side of the street is black does not mean he is not a highly educated and respectable man. We need not be cold and hostile to homeless people, who may truly understand happiness and kindness on a level we may never comprehend. We don't have to assume that the loud and obnoxious in-your-face co-worker is a pompous jackass who will belittle others to raise himself up. We have to live in a world where we look for the good in other people, not the bad. The opportunities, not the betrayals.
If a stranger held the door for you, gave you a not-creepy smile, or told you that they liked your shirt, would you not feel a little better? Would you not have that little stir of excitement that there is good in the world, that strangers really can be altruistic and not aliens who want to make a fool out of you. And even if the chain of good deeds didn't come back around to you, would you feel good knowing that maybe, just maybe, that small deed of almost unnoticeable caring made someone's day? To the worker who just got laid off, the parent who is worried about the safety of their children, the man who just got splashed on the sidewalk when a car sped through a puddle. Can one little action really make someone's day better? Can it?
