Random Acts Of Kindness, Leading By Example

Two personal experiences that I hope will inspire you. One at Christmas time and the other on the side of the road. Over the years I have been fortunate to have many opportunities to help strangers. With hopes of inspiring others I will share a couple of my favorites, I am happy I was in the right place at the right time. On a Sunday morning mid-winter, a foot of snow on the ground, mid 20 degree temperatures outside, I wake up to find that my BTC machine has failed and shutdown. It is located at my office, which is 40 minutes away so I call a co-worker that lives nearby to check on it. An hour later he calls me to inform me that it smells like electrical smoke and will not turn on. Not knowing the extent of the damage, I immediately start thinking the entire machine, all four $600 plus video cards could be toast, motherboard, power supply. After letting that marinate for a few minutes, I decide a trip to the office is necessary. The drive there is slowly putting me into a horrible mood, obsessing about what could have gone wrong. In the last stretch of highway, I see a car in the left emergency lane alongside a 3 foot or more tall snowbank and a mid 50's man standing alongside it. I quickly turn on my hazards and pull up behind him. As I approach him, I see he is looking into the area between the divided highway. I look over and see a mini van with pieces of bumper and fender all around it. The man tells me it is his family, but is tentative to make his way through the snow fearing he might fall or get stuck. Definitely not dressed for the weather, shorts and a t-shirt with a hoodie on as a jacket, I jump the snow and rush down to the mini-van. I ask the woman, which was this guys wife if she is OK as well as their two kids, and they are all OK thankfully. I rush back to relay this info to the husband and then offer to be a support for him to navigate through the snow so he can make his way down to the car. I help each of them over to the vehicle the husband was driving, then transport all of the items to the other vehicle as well. After everyone is loaded into the vehicle the husband comes over to me and says "I didn't know what I was going to do, and then like an Angel you showed up out of nowhere". This was a very moving statement and completely brought my mood around. As far as the computer goes, I had one video card burn up on me and was up and running within an hour of arriving at the office. This story inspired my heading...

It's Christmas day and my wife and I are headed to her parents house. As usual we are running a little late and need to stop and pick up a couple things as well. We stop and one of the few stores open, Walgreens. As we walk through the entrance I see a young black woman and her son waiting in the lobby (it's cold outside) for the bus to arrive. In that brief moment as we pass them I notice neither are smiling and a 3-4 year old on Christmas needs to be smiling. A few steps past the entrance I stop, I tell my wife to proceed on that I want to do something here. I walk out into the lobby and say "Hi" and ask "How are you guys doing out here?". Then I say "I couldn't help but notice that this little guy isn't smiling and it's Christmas so I want to do something to make him smile". I tell them to go into the store (remember unfortunately we are at Walgreens) and pick out anything he wants and I will buy it for him as a Christmas gift. Immediately he lights up with excitement. They head into the store and a short time later they come to the front of the store with an item costing $10. I tell them I think they can do better, think bigger, anything you want. Seeing tentativeness in taking advantage, I tell the mom anything up to $50. They return again with something bigger a short time later. Just seeing the impact this had on the kids day and even the mom's is a memory I will always cherish. I hope these inspire you to both act and to share your own stories in the comments, I would love to read them. Drewdy