The gift of random acts of kindness

I am a huge Ani DiFranco fan. I love her music and I especially love her lyrics! If you have never listened to her, then you may not be aware what I am talking about. She is not an artist that you will typically hear on mainstream radio stations. Her music is powerful and deals with significant and often difficult social issues. Her lyrics are poetry put to music. One of my favorites is "Joyful Girl"

i do it for the joy it brings
because i'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
i do it because it's the least i can do
i do it because i learned it from you
i do it just because i want to
because I want to

I think this song speaks to me because I was raised by an entire family of people that taught me the gift of random acts of kindness. They taught me by modeling caring and compassionate behavior not only toward friends and other family members, but also toward strangers. Witnessing this behavior had a profound effect on me and it is something that I have adopted in my own life.

When I was a child these acts of kindness took the form of simple manners, saying "please" and "thank you"or holding the door. As I have gotten older I find that these acts have grown into things like, offering someone a smile and making eye contact, getting an item from the top shelf in the market for someone who can't reach, helping an elderly person struggling with something heavy, or sometimes its a simple as just listening to someone who needs to feel heard.

Today I was at the doctor with my grandmother, and while we were waiting for the medical transport van to pick us up, a woman with a walker was struggling to exit the Oncologist office. This is the same Oncologist office that I have frequented with my mother while she was battling breast cancer for the second time. I instinctively grabbed the door so that the woman could maneuver her walker through the doorway. She thanked me, and then she said "I just got the best news I ever could have gotten, my cancer is gone." Here was this woman, sharing what was probably one of the happiest moments of her life, with me, a complete stranger, simply because I was kind enough to take the time to hold the door for her. Of course I congratulated her, and she shared that she was going to be the flower girl in the upcoming wedding of her grandson. What a way to celebrate that she has beaten this terrible disease.

In that moment it occurred to me that there is irony in the random act of kindness. We think we are performing these acts as a gift to someone else, when in fact it is also a gift to ourselves.

i do it for the joy it brings
because i'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world