Random acts of kindness can be defined as simple, unexpected gestures performed to help or bring joy to another person without any expectation of a reward. There are many examples of random acts of kindness such as paying for a stranger’s coffee, leaving encouraging notes for people on their cars, holding the door for people, and even paying the difference if someone runs short. There are many different ways to do random acts of kindness small to big. Random acts of kindness can make you feel better about yourself and make someone else feel better because you took a small second of your day to give back to someone else you may not even know.
Sophomore Paige Crabtree was asked if she thought it was important to do random acts of kindness.“Yes, because it doesn’t take that much out of your say and might be beneficial to somebody else.”.
Austin Hadley, a FMHS science teacher said “Yea, I think that when we take time out of our day to help somebody else, especially when someone is going through a hard time and we do little things it lets them know that we see them and we can help them go through their struggle.” From his answer he also agrees similarly to Paige. He mentioned how by doing something nice it can show someone you’re there for them, this can be another positive impact on someone.
By having these positive impacts on people you are also having positive impacts on your community. Most random acts of kindness can end up in a chain of acts of kindness; we’ve seen any of these instances in media and in everyday lives. One video that stands out about random acts of kindness and the chain effect is the “Life Vest Inside – Kindness Boomerang – “One Day’’” from the LifeVestInside organization. The video shows a demonstration of a guy who sparks a kindness chain that then leads back to him. An example that happens in the video is, a younger boy falling off his skateboard and a construction worker helping him up, the younger boy then helps an older lady cross the road while helping carry her groceries, and the cycle of these random acts of kindness continues. All these acts were small but made the other person feel better and then proceed to help the next person.
Crabtree was also asked what kindness meant to her and she said, “Showing up and supporting people whenever needed, I think you can tell when someone has a bad day and even smiling at them can turn their day around.”
Hadley was asked the same question. “I think that kindness in general means going out of our way to help even if it’s small like holding the door or picking something up for someone, it’s the small things that make the world a better place.” Hadley then added, “Anything that you can do that helps someone else out small or big it makes the world a better place from the day before or the morning before.”
Him and Paige had similar answers to the question, from these answers we can see that by doing these small acts we can one, turn someone’s day around, two, make those differences around the community then may lead to bigger communities then the world.
Overall, by doing small acts of kindness we can turn other people’s day around and make them see, we can make a difference in our community, and we can even spark kindness chains. Random acts of kindness can have positive impacts and it’s important to do random acts of kindness, for yourself and for others.
