A few stories of random acts of kindness to make you smile

It feels like a week of good little deeds. I didn’t do anything earth-shattering—more like little acts of returning a grocery cart for a stranger at the store or dropping some money in a homeless man’s canister or helping someone I don’t know find daycare in the neighbourhood. These are the kind of good deeds that give you a little buzz of satisfied happiness. And as you may remember previously on this blog, we talked about how little acts of kindness are most definitely a way to bring some happiness to your life.

Then I asked some friends—done any random acts of kindness recently? One friend shared that she’d recently handed some takeaway pizza from a restaurant to a homeless man on one particularly chilly night. Another leaves loonies in the grocery cart locks, letting the next user essentially score a cart for free.  

And then there’s Cheri McNeil’s story.  Recently the Orangeville, Ont. nurse was at a coffee shop and ordered her usual—a regular coffee with milk. “And I got to the counter and the lady said. "The gentleman before you paid for your coffee, Merry Christmas! I had had a crappy morning and was feeling like less than a stellar mom, and it put a smile on my face,” she says. So a few days later standing in that same coffee shop line, she spotted two twoonies in her wallet. “And I returned the favour and paid for the coffee for someone else. “And it was the same woman behind the counter who asked ‘Returning the good deed?’” says McNeil. “And I told her it felt like someone else needed a smile today too.”

While all those stories of random happy deeds put a smile on my own face as well, then came this story: it seems across Kmart stores in the U.S., multiple layaway accounts are being paid off mysteriously and anonymously. As The Toronto Star reports, at one Omaha Kmart store, a woman approached the cash and paid off layaway plans for almost 50 customers. On her way out, she paid for two carts worth of toys for one woman and doled out $50 bills, all in the name of her husband Ben who had recently passed away. She left no name, asking that people only remember Ben.

And so, still amazed at this story and the many stories my friends shared with me, this week has left me inspired to try and do more to help others. Big or small, those acts have the double benefit of helping the happiness of others as well as putting a happy little spring into your own step. What I’ll do, I don’t know, but I’m thinking of incorporating it into some sort of New Year’s resolution where I resolve to do more random acts of kindness year-round.

What about you? Have you performed a random act of kindness recently?  

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