What act of kind-heartedness has moved you recently and how did it make you feel?

[Ransom itch]

In a world where it's so easy to get lost in the negative, have you experienced an act of human kindness in your life recently? How did it make you feel? We look after an 18 yr old lad with autism ever other week for respite care. I took Joe into a music shop where he found a flute he fell in love with. The shopkeeper could tell Joe had 'issues' and yet he was so patient with him as Joe asked him question after question whilst I hovered in the background. Every so often, as Joe asked yet another question, the shopkeeper would wink at me to say, don't worry, he doesn't phase me. This means a lot because you'd be surprised how so many people do get phased in such instances. And then, as Joe finally decided and picked up the £25 flute, he bluntly told the shop keeper he only had £20. Knowing it was Joe's condition that was the cause of his bluntness, and not some self-seeking ploy to get a better price, the shopkeeper accepted Joe's £20 graciously and the sale was completed. It was more the fact that this guy treated young Joe with such respect that really touched me and his kindness towards Joe buoyed me for the rest of the day! I even offered to pay the difference but the shopkeeper refused.

 

[Ninae]

Today. My dad sponsoring me with more money, as usual. Even after over 10 hospital admissions for drug overdoses he hasn't cut me off. Can't forget the love we shared when I was a child and the joy I brought him. I guess I lucked out like that.

 

[rickolasnice]

I always read "the good deed feed" section in the free newspaper they give out at train stations..

The other day someone was thanking whoever it was that slipped a £10 note into their pocket after over hearing their conversation about money troubles..

It's small but the fact whoever it was did it without letting even the woman know about it, wanting no recognition / anything but to help her out.. made me smile.

 

[Trying2Iso]

A large man busted down my door and took me to Gringott's, where i inherited a large fortune. Which i complained about.

 

[herbavore]

^?

I just spent practically a month in the UK (England and Wales) visiting people that I have either worked with or connected with through Bluelight. Without exception, these "internet strangers" treated me with such generosity and kindness that at times I was almost embarrassed. One of the people I went to visit was another mother that, like me, discovered Bluelight upon the overdose death of her son. She struggles every day with the will to go on living. And yet every day of my visit she brought me coffee in bed and each night cooked beautiful, nourishing and elegant meals that we ate by the light of many candles, though we often cried through them. That was a kindness I will never forget. I am always struck by how simple kindness really is and yet how profoundly we are enriched and nourished by it.

This also brings to mind something that I have written about elsewhere on this site but as it is bringing tears to my eye right now in remembrance I would like to relate it again here: when I used to accompany my son on his endless trips to drug court, the halls outside the courtroom would begin to fill with all the other people there for the same reason. The misery and shame that hung in the air of those halls was so thick that sometimes I felt it hard to breathe. People kept their eyes averted or downcast. My son also was scared and humiliated, wearing the long sleeved shirts to cover up the track marks on his own arms and sweating, I knew his mind was racing with anxiety, the same anxiety that had plagued his life from an early age, now with these added layers of fear that came with being surrounded by cops and lawyers and judges with "felon" attached to the name we gave him 19 years ago. But there would always come a moment when he would decide to rebel against that heavy atmosphere of guilt and shame and fear and he would engage first one person, then another with a small joke, a smile or a kind word. If anyone had ever told me when he was young that I would feel most overwhelmed with joy at the outstanding character of my son sitting outside of drug court, I would have thought them crazy. But this is how life--and your children--lead you into unexpected places of grace and beauty. To see his kindness, so simple, so pure and so courageous in that setting under those circumstances continues to be a teacher for me.