Published on December 18, 2010
Philippine Daily Inquirer's 2bU
Hello, stranger -changing the world, one stranger at a time
WE’VE ALL been warned before: don’t talk to strangers.
It’s perhaps the most overused warning our parents told us when we were kids. But now that we have the sense to judge what can and cannot jeopardize our survival, I now dare to twist that imperative into, “Always be kind to strangers.”
It takes a lot of ridiculousness and impulsiveness for one to think that any simple act of kindness can dramatically change the world.
As I am both ridiculous and impulsive, on Aug. 1 this year, I decided to start a blog campaigning for kindness. I challenged readers (a.k.a. my friends) to do random acts of kindness for unsuspecting strangers.
Knowing that there can be a large disparity between how kind we are to those who are dear to us and those we consider as strangers, I thought it was a challenge worth posing.
It can be done
Wonderful things have been done since the campaign started. Strangers from different parts of the world have been given a reason to smile because of a random kind act.
Lei Tan, a friend of mine who lives in Canada, decided to buy a McDonald’s breakfast for a man who gives away free newspapers every morning. With the meal, she included a note letting the newspaper man know how appreciated he was for the work he did.
“I never saw his reaction afterwards, but one thing was for sure, I felt good,” Lei wrote of her experience.
Another friend of mine, Pin Orejana, a resident of New Zealand, gave a bar of Mentos and a note to a bus driver. It was her way of thanking him for the service he does.
“He smiled, and we made him happy! It felt good,” she said.
You see, hard and taxing as it may seem, expanding the scope of our kindness can be done. The goodness it brings goes both ways for the giver and the receiver.
Ridiculous warnings
On Nov. 21, my friends and I celebrated what we called “Kindness Day.”
When we went to Quezon City Circle just to give away freebies, it became more evident to me that the more kind acts we do, the kinder the world begins to appear to us as well.
Before we ventured into the park, we received all kinds of warnings such as “You might get mobbed,” or “Mag-ingat kayo sa magnanakaw!”
But every time we received a thank you, a polite smile, or even just bewildered looks thrown at us as we walked with a sign that said, “LIBRE,” the warnings we had heard earlier seemed more ridiculous.
I realized, the more we give without asking for anything in return, for some reason, the more pathetic our pessimistic conceptions about the dynamics of the world become.
Restoring faith
When you’re being a kind stranger to another stranger, doesn’t that already change the world in some way? Because when we exercise our capacity for kindness, we actually affirm the idea that things can always get better. That way, people find a reason to restore their faith in doing what is right and what is good.
Science tells us the brain can rewire itself and change its structure depending on our daily practices. Science also tells us habits aren’t so hard to acquire. If, over time, we have gotten the habit of tweeting our every activity and changing our Facebook status every two minutes, I thought, isn’t it possible for us to become kinder individuals?
I think it is. And I also think it’s possible for us to be able to make the world a better place—one kind act at a time, one stranger at a time.
View article here.
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