Thursday, July 15, 2010

The Kindness of Strangers

Happy Thursday Sweetpeas!
Instead of my usual Thursday roundup I wanted to share a story with you.
Lately Jus & I have been thinking of taking a road trip down (or up) one of the coasts for our honeymoon, we've been trying to decide which coast to visit. Yesterday at work one of my tables was a man who was looking at an atlas, I asked where he was planning to go and it turns out he is planning a trip to Vancouver and then down to San Diego.
I told him that we were thinking to take a road trip for our honeymoon and he immediately started listing off places on the west coast that we had to visit. I mentioned that we were thinking of traveling on the east coast too and the man said he was from the east coast and that for our honeymoon we should definitely head west.
We continued to talk about places that Jus and I should visit and as the man got ready to leave he handed me a fifty dollar bill and told me to save it for our honeymoon and use it to go out for dinner.
I'm not sure if I can tell you how overwhelmed I was by this man's thoughtfulness, generosity, kindness. Not only did this exchange remind me of the kindness of others but also how important it is to do kind things for others. I'm not sure if that man knows how much he affected our day today but Jus and I keep mentioning how kind his act was with smiles on our faces.
I'm still thinking about this exchange and all that I ask from you today is for you to go out of your way to do something nice for someone else. Bring your neighbor some chocolate chip cookies, give you mom some flowers, carry a strangers groceries to their car, just try to make someone else's life a little easier and a lot happier, I'm sure your reward will be just as great.

PS If you do something nice be sure to leave a comment so I can brag about you!

7 comments:

Kate.Stoltzfus said...

I love this story! What a kind man.

Nik and I can highly recommend a trip down the West coast! We started in San Francisco, then up to wine country (my favorite stop) and made our way down to Monterey, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Santa Barbara and San Diego. It was AWESOME. Also, we highly recommend getting on coast starlight train... it is a lovely stress-free way to see the entire coast (plus we found the prices to be pretty reasonable). We broke up the train rides into 6-hour segments. It was perfect. Best of luck with your planning!

OH! One last tip. We had excellent luck using Priceline to stay at 4-star hotels for not a lot of money!

Malin said...

That's such a sweet thing to do! What a lovely man!!

As for the roadtrip I would definitely recommend the West coast. My friend and I did a roadtrip pretty much through all of the country (29 states + DC), first the West coast, then we crossed from Portland to Denver - Little Rock - Memphis - Nashville - Greenville, NC before doing the East coast. Though I loved both coasts, the West wins, no competition!!

Hello, I'm Tayler said...

That is so incredibly kind.

Meghan said...

Holy cow! That is incredibly kind and generous! Way to pay it forward - literally!

carmen said...

How awesome! You should do the west. Go to sonoma county for wine.

Anonymous said...

As a former east-coaster I have tons of love for the east. But really, can you go wrong either way? I had a similar "super sweet and unexcpected gift from a stranger" experience back in February. It was much needed and definitely appreciated!

Alee said...

What a sweet story!