“You cannot do an act of kindness too soon.”
This quote is by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who lived in the 1800s.
When I read Emerson’s quote, I was reminded of acts of kindness people have done for me, including this recent one: I take a light rail train to and from work. As I was walking toward the train platform, I saw that the train had arrived a couple minutes early and was waiting there. I walked faster in the hopes of getting to it before it left. There was a young man a ways ahead of me who was also walking toward the platform. When he arrived at the train, he pressed the button to open the door and held it a few seconds for me to arrive there and enter the train. I thanked him. I assumed he too was going to get on the train, but he didn’t. Once I was in, he continued walking down the platform. He had held it to help me.
Gestures such as the young man’s are gifts. He didn’t know me; I was one of many people in the city who don’t know each other. But he decided he’d do something helpful for another person. I wouldn’t have expected someone to do that for me, and if the train had left a minute early so that I would have needed to wait for the next one, that would have been an inconvenience but not a major one. And yet his thoughtfulness—his act of kindness–added a special moment to my day.
All of us are able to add special moments to other people’s days. Those small gifts can make a big difference for the persons who receive them, and they add to what is positive in our world. And as Emerson says, such acts of kindness can never be done too soon.
I’m very thankful for all that is good and right and beautiful in our world. But we all know there is also bad and wrong and ugly in our world. Anything we can do to counteract that matters.