Small Acts of Kindness

"Whoever is kind, Allah will be kind to him; therefore be kind to man on the earth. He Who is in heaven will show mercy upon you."(Abu Daud: Tirmidhi) My car practically got totaled today at the mosque. We came out of the mosque at the end of the prayer to find our car in amazingly bad shape: the two doors on the driver's side were totally crushed. We panicked of course, since the perpetrator was nowhere to be found. Luckily, a woman had seen the guy who hit our car, and she approached us with this information. The guy (who was driving a truck) denied ever hitting our car, even though our car's paint was on his truck! The thing that made me happy was that this woman stuck around even though she didn't have to. Just because it was the honest thing to do. Which got me thinking, setting aside your own interests, when was the last time you did something for someone else just because it was the right thing to do? I'm not talking about saving someone's life here, I'm talking about the small acts of kindness that people remember. Like when the cashier gives you a bit too much change, do you go back? Or when someone's carrying heavy bags, do you wait and hold the door open for them? These are the things people remember. When someone holds open a door, or gives up a seat on the bus, it's an act that fills the person on the receiving end with a kind of satisfaction and a feeling that they'd like to reciprocate the act of kindness in some way. I mean, if someone gives you his seat on the subway, wouldn't you perhaps be happy enough to pass on some of that goodness to another person you meet that day? It'd be like a never-ending cycle of kindness. Which would be pretty cool. So, I'm waiting for the cycle to start. Maybe I should start it myself. As Anne Shirley would say "Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it - yet."