It’s a time when we sing about “peace on earth and good will to men.”
Is this message still relevant today?
Yes, I think so, and here’s why. If you can think of at least one act of kindness someone has done for you in the last six months – which I can – I think that’s evidence enough that good people are still out there. Many of them.
It may not seem such a big deal if one person has been kind to you in the last six months, but one can never tell of the ripple effect. A pebble skipped in a pond can make many waves.
I’ll just tell you one act of kindness in my life, and it happened just the other day.
I was at the grocery store staring into the freezer section that contained coffee creamers. My assignment was to get a particular brand of coffee creamer with a caramel macchiato flavor for my visiting daughter-in-law. She doubts if she could survive without her morning dose, or, to be more accurate, she doubts if the rest of us in the family could survive her having a morning without coffee. She’d settle for straight black coffee, no doubt, but a creamer by just any other name isn’t as sweet.
At this point, in my struggles to find this, I started to get a twitch in my eye, thinking about the mayhem that might happen if I return saying I couldn’t find it.
I left the area temporarily to look for a clerk or attendant, but seeing none within shouting range, I returned to look for the coffee creamer again. As I was staring into a conglomerate of choices, including a seeming empty tunnel space, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a kind customer patiently standing behind my right shoulder. She was looking at the same shelf where I was looking.
She hadn’t been there three seconds before, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.
I smiled nervously, apologized for hindering her view and moved out of her way, urging her to take a closer look. I explained what I was looking for in vain.
“Here it is, baby,” she said in that friendly way that Southern women are known to do, gesturing to the bottom shelf where there was a creamer with caramel flavor.
“No, that’s not it,” I said, repeating the brand I was needing. She studied the area and, in a flash, had read the small identifying print and told me it had been “here,” in that empty area of the shelf.
“Oh, well,” I said with resignation, ready to move on, and she said, “Wait a minute. Look back here.”
Way in the back, lying on its back rather than standing upright, was what I wanted, what my daughter-in-law preferred. This angel reached back there and rescued it from ignominy and handed it to me with a warm smile.
“You’re my hero!” I said.
That she took time to help me was a genuine act of kindness.
“Thank you so much!” I shouted as I hustled away, feeling a bit like George Bailey when he realizes he’s alive again in Bedford Falls.
It also reminded me of the time in September when a friend rescued me in the AEX parking lot – not once, but twice (arrival and return) – when I couldn’t figure out the cursed parking scan thingamajig.
And that reminded me of the kindnesses of three separate “Free Now” taxi drivers, each from a different nationality (Nigerian, Polish and Irish) that we encountered on a trip to the Emerald Isle.
And that reminded me of the kindness of top-shelf comedian Jon Reep of Hickory, N.C., coming to Alexandria to do a stand-up routine for a reasonably priced ticket last August.
See what I mean about a ripple effect, from the seemingly empty shelf of a grocery store to a top-shelf comedian — kindnesses all around.
It even inspired me a few weeks ago to turn my car around and return to visit a homeless man I spotted lying on the ground behind the CVS store in our neighborhood.
He wasn’t your average showboat panhandler on a busy intersection by a stoplight. After a brief conversation with the man, I could see he was down on his luck, not seeking the spotlight but embarrassed by it all.
I asked him if there was anything he wanted that I could get him.
“You know,” he said, pausing with a half-smile shadowed by a dark mustache and beard, “I’ve always liked McDoanld’s.”
What would you have done in that situation?
I think you can guess what I did — a bit reluctantly at first but ultimately with joy, because it is in giving that we receive.