Random Acts of Kindness Week

Yesterday, February 17, kicked off this week’s celebration of goodwill to others. All too often in our busy lives, we get wrapped up in what we do and what we need to do—our own versions of tunnel vision. Sometimes, we just don’t think about being nice to each other. It doesn’t mean we’re not good people. If we stopped a moment and thought about others too, we’d have a more pleasant get-along-together existence. There would be less stress and tribulation to endure. With all the awful happenings in countries around the world today, who couldn’t use less of that stuff?

One of my dear friends told me about a wonderful experience that happened to her in a fast-food restaurant drive-in line recently. She rolled up to the window to pay for her order and found out the person in the car ahead of her paid for her food. What a great thing to do. My friend was surprised and thrilled. She paid for the order of the people in the car behind her. Hopefully, the trend continued for the rest of the day at the restaurant.

I got to thinking about more nice things we can do for each other. Here are some of my ideas:

When you’re driving at night, keep your headlights on the low beams if you can see taillights in front of you. If you’ve got your brights on and you see an oncoming car, dim your lights. Otherwise, in both cases, you blind the drivers in front of you. It’s harder to see at night for some people normally, and especially on rural roads, extremely bright lights in front or reflecting in a rearview mirror make it really difficult.

Hold a door open for someone behind you on entering or exiting a place.

Smile at others.

Say thank you if someone does something nice for you.

Say excuse me if you’re interrupting a conversation or just needing to get by. For instance, when you’re in a grocery store and you have to walk in between another customer and what they’re looking for that’s on the opposite side of the aisle.

If you see someone straining to reach a product in a store, and you’re tall enough to get it down for them, do it.

I came across this site, Random Acts of Kindness.org which has tons of ideas for opportunities to be nice.

Improve someone’s day if you can and Happy Writing!