An act of kindness can do a lot for someone. It can make both the doer and the recipient feel good, as well as even change the course of someone else’s life. Maybe it can even lift a person up, with the doer having no clue just how much their act means. One January afternoon this year, I experienced an act of kindness, one that is unforgettable and perhaps done in its purest form.
Some might be familiar with the term “January blues”, which, according to PsychCentral, is “a common period of low mood that occurs during the first month of the New Year”. This is a common thing that people go through, and I was no exception. Perhaps it was because of the yearning to go back to the holidays, which are never long enough. Maybe it was because the good times that one is supposed to have during that period were instead replaced with a high fever, chills, dizziness and the worst headache I’ve ever had, among other things. The holidays were the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in Macau after all.
Life had just started yet again and already I needed something to help me get by. I was making my way from a gallery in Nape to another gallery in the city centre to take pictures for our art page, deciding to walk through the Jardim de São Francisco to save time.
I was thinking about a lot of things while also feeling extremely blue, rushing as I was lost in thought when a little girl ran up behind me. She looked to be about four to five years old and was covered from head to toe in warm clothing. Her eyes, which were brown and innocent, were looking up at me as she held something in her hand. It was a flower, one that she was offering me.
I didn’t know how to react at first, so I smiled at her and started to walk ahead, but she was adamant. I started to hear a pitter-patter of small feet running behind me and soon, the little girl was in front of me again, holding the flower up as she had not even a minute ago.
I am still unsure why, but in the midst of all the gloom and stress that came with that day, that one act had changed everything. It made me happy and it left me with a warm feeling. It was an act of kindness, one that came in its purest form.
I bent down to receive her gift and I thanked her, to which she smiled back before running to the park’s playground. I wondered if she felt in any way as equally clueless as I was, and if she just knew that I needed that. As she disappeared into the sea of other kids, I realised that this child would never have any idea how her kind act impacted me and just how grateful I really was.
Before I went about the rest of my day, I decided to slow down and take a longer walk to contemplate on that moment. It was unexpected, yet more than pleasant, leaving an effect that I still have not forgotten about two months later. If certain moments were really sent from above or wherever, this was one of those that I can certainly be thankful for.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
