A New Hobby

I’ve got a new hobby. Since I was a Volunteer for the project “Pay it forward” with Comox ValleyLinks, where I had to collect kindness stories, I’ve had, as a hobby, collecting kindness stories. So today I was practicing my new hobby; asking people to tell me about their kindness story. First I asked my sister. It’s nice because now when I ask her, she knows what to answer. Before, she would always be looking for an amazing story that everyone could remember. I feel that she now notices more the unobtrusive kind acts of her everyday life. So she told me about her friend who helped her with a school project she was having a hard time with.

I asked Julia, a friend of mine who I met in a youth camp about three years ago and with whom I still talk sometimes. She told me about a colleague with whom she switches shifts when her work doesn’t match her busy schedule. She also told me about a friend who gives her drives when she really needs it; to go to the groceries for an example.

Next I asked Franck, a good friend of mine who I didn’t see for a while and he told me that his whole family brought his mom to the restaurant, without her knowing about it, for her 50th birthday. Than Jonathan, who I was on committees with in high school, told me a very cool story. At the restaurant where he worked, the same couple would come back every year, at Christmas Eve, to share a good dinner together. At the end of their meal they would choose another couple that they didn’t know in the restaurant and would pay for their dinner. They wouldn’t say it was from them. The only other thing they would do would be to write Merry Christmas on their bill.

Finally I asked an old family friend if he would have a kindness story to share. He answered by saying that people weren’t being very nice to him these days. That they would call him name and laugh at him. I told him, joking, that life was being very good for him these days. Than I told him it wasn’t cool and just by sending him a heart symbol from the internet, I sent him kindness. I added that my whole family really thinks he rocks. We decided we would soon go for a mini putt game with my brother and sister, just like we did last summer. And we just kept talking. I didn’t do that because I had pity of him. I did it because I honestly think he’s great and that I consider him a friend even if we don’t see each other very often. I guess he felt the trust I had in him and before I left, he told me he had a kindness story. He told me it was me. He said I was pretty good at bringing kindness in people’s day. That was very nice of him.
I also have a kindness story. Today, I’ve been told I was kind, by someone I have a lot of respect for.
Mj