Today I was almost stranded by a highway, with a broken phone and no metro service, as a cold winter night descended. It wasn’t the first time I’d found myself a long nights walk from home, but it was the first time it had been in a new city. To say I was a little worried is an understatement. I had been juggling assignments, projects, and interviews throughout the past week. I’d planned my days by the minute, and finding myself about to walk however many hours it would take to get home felt as if the Universe wanted to throw me a curveball to end all curveballs. As I debated the best way to stay warm on the walk home, a work colleague passing by offered to call me a ride home. While this may seem like a kind, but not unique, gesture to some, to me it was a heartwarming reminder of an important fact; that, in part, I have made it so far in life because of the countless kind gestures of the strangers around me.
I’ve often thought of what my thank you graduation speech would be like. It would include the usual parts; the role my parents, family, friends, and mentors played in my life. But alongside them are the others, the strangers who took time out of their day to do a kind act that changed my life for the better. The registrar official who covered my transcript fees when I didn’t have enough money. The taxi driver who saw me walking in the rain with a soaked backpack and drove me home for free. The old couple in New York City who kept me company with a game of chess in the park. This is a thank you to all the wonderfully bright lives I’ve met in passing, who managed to pass on a little bit of their light onto me.
I do not think it can be overstated how important these small interactions can be. Part of what determines my mental health on a day-to-day basis depends in some part on the interactions I have with strangers. While this may sound like a recipe for unsteady mental health, I’ve found that it can be incredibly rewarding, especially as I’ve had more positive than negative interactions. For me these moments can serve as a daily dose of encouragement and positivity, helping me deal with the stressors of life by showing me what the world looks like through the eyes of others. When you get a chance to leave your head and learn about the lives of others, it can help ground you in the reality of your own life by putting your struggles into perspective.
The author Carlos Ruiz Zafón once asked the question why we feel freer talking to strangers than the people we know. In answer, one of his characters replies “Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are”. In this, I’ve found that having these chance encounters with strangers not only helps brighten my days but also helps me see the true shape of my own personality, separate from the expectations of those around me. It’s an important step in the process of self-introspection. While it might be easier to spend life staying to yourself, ignoring the lives around you, I think it’s a tragic loss to do so. A favorite quote of mine that sums up my thoughts goes “...each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk”. To live life and ignore the thousands of stories unfolding around you is to have a half-lived life, one in which you miss out on the opportunity to learn more about the world, and yourself.
For The MindReset Inc., the Theme of the Month for January is Jubilance, and I can’t think of a more fitting example of the jubilance of life than the kindness found in the helping hand of strangers, when it’s least expected and most needed.
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One thought on “Kindness Among Strangers Finding Encouragement Through Chance Encounters”
Beautiful piece! Such a wonderful reminder to start 2019 🙂