Act of Kindness Day 21: Turn on your Kindness Radar

“If you’ve been dilligently perfoming Acts of Kindess through the month, you may have noticed something: after a while, you start to be on the lookout for ways to be kind. That’s because your capacity for kindness, like any other strength, grows with use, almost as if it’s a kind of muscle. Put another way, the more kindness you give to the world, the more opportunities to be kind you notice, and the more you’ll find yourself wanting to help in ways big and small. We call this your kindness radar. We’ve all got one, and today we want you to really listen to it, and more importantly, act on it.”

Mission Accomplished: I thought I would pay if forward today and buy someone’s coffee. I go to my favorite coffee shop as often as I can. While sitting there today, I was watching the hustle and bustle of people grabbing a coffee and rushing out to check off the next item on their “to do” list. I handed the barista $5.00 and asked her to let the next person who walks through have their coffee on me, anonymously. It didn’t work out as I thought it would. I watched a gentleman approach. I couldn’t hear him, but he didn’t smile.  He actually looked like Grumpy Cat. He did, however, take out money and paid for his coffee. Yay! He was going to pay it forward. Within the next few minutes about 20 people came through the door and I couldn’t determine if anyone else was paying it forward. As I was leaving the coffee shop, I asked the barista how far along it had gone. She informed me that it only went to two people. I was disappointed that the kind gesture didn’t replicate. I would like to think that whomever it stopped with was on a tight budget and perhaps that small amount would allow them to do something else for their family.

I will keep my kindness radar up and be on the lookout for other opportunities.

See you tomorrow with another AoK!