Do The Next Good Thing And Change Your World

When I woke up this morning, I was grateful that I didn't feel the deep sadness I had gone to bed with. When Alex asked me "How are you?" I could genuinely say, "I'm good."

But with the day came more feelings: annoyance, anger, joy, excitement, curiosity, fear, and again, a great sadness that makes my skin tingle in a way I can hardly describe as pleasant.

I spent some time on the computer today, and when I found this site called Vocal was having a writing challenge that revolved around good deeds, I was immediately intrigued. My work in the world feels intimately connected to the power of kindness and spreading goodness in the world.

So I was a bit disheartened that it felt like a sorrowful struggle to think of a good deed worth writing about.

I thought about the kind words my partner spoke to me last night when I was having a hard time, and about my mom giving birth to me and my siblings despite chronic back pain.

I am grateful for these kind acts, but somehow I felt the need to write about something else - I just wasn't sure what. And with the inspiration lodged in my psyche, I was dredged into the day with a strong sense of grief welling up at every chance it could: when I considered going to the grocery store, when Alex kissed me, when I listened to a song about being able to make a change wherever I am... a song which, perhaps not coincidentally, is a call for small acts of good will to ripple positive change across the world.

When the lump in my throat would let me, I sang along. But I thought, can I actually make a change from where I am right now, from within this emotional landscape?

It wasn't that these things were causing me grief or inspiring my sadness, but these feelings would crop up almost without warning, and often in response to something I thought of as small. I felt so sad and confused.

Alex and I headed for the grocery store. I was mostly silent while he drove. He was mostly silent, too, sometimes reaching for my hand at stoplights. For the most part, he's a happy, quiet sort. I felt grateful for him and his presence, but wasn't fully present myself, distracted by a mish-mash of uncertain feelings and cloudy thoughts about the world and my life.

When we got to the store, we strapped on our masks and headed for the entrance. I hardly noticed if there were other people in the parking lot around us. I find it's easier to forget the inherent connection between us humans when our faces are so obscured.

I was dragging a pace or two behind Alex as we were about to enter the store. A woman with at least two rambunctious children were exiting. They were all speaking at the same time, in a language I didn't understand. It could have been heavily-accented English though, I wasn't paying very close attention.

Just before I walked through the automatic doors into the grocery store, I noticed that at the bottom of the woman's cart was a large glass jar of salsa. It was upside-down, resting precariously at an angle between the two front metal bars. It seemed as though it might lose its place at any moment and crash onto the ground.

At first, I kept walking, brushing it off thinking, "oh well, so what if it does fall, break, make a mess, ruin their dinner plan..." But just as I had that thought, I had another one, too. "What about doing a good deed? Right now..."

And before I knew it I was outside again, quickly making it to the woman's shopping cart just before she started to push it over the yellow bumps at the edge of the sidewalk which would have meant a sure end for the salsa.

"You have something about to fall there," I pointed. She was startled and perhaps didn't understand. I was close enough now, having caught up to her easily.

"Here you go, it was going to fall," I said, picking up the jar and setting it in her cart for her.

Her kids kept chattering, and she seemed confused, saying something I couldn't understand to one of the kids. I didn't stick around to see her smile, or receive any recognition or validation. That wasn't why I did it. Honestly I was hardly thinking. But I think I did it because I wanted to know that I could make that choice: to do the kind thing. To do a good deed.

Alex and I watched the movie Klaus the other night. It's a heart-warming animated film offering a story for the origins of the Santa Clause experience. There's a quote that keeps coming up in that film:

A true selfless act always sparks another.

I was glad I had rescued that salsa jar, even if it wasn't something she had meant to take home, at least I spared the worker who would have had to clean the glass up off the asphalt.

I reentered the store looking for Alex. He hadn't made it far. I joined him looking at which avocados to buy, not mentioning the family or my grief-joy-feelings of the moment.

We were leaving the store to head to one more to finish off the grocery shopping that would tide us over for the next few days. But before we left the parking lot, we saw that the neighboring strip mall had burned down. It must have been recent because we had been there just a few days before. The wreckage was quite a sight. We went over and stared in silence for a moment, while an old man walked by, shouting loudly into a handheld radio that was playing a commercial through some static. I wondered what might have happened to start the fire, where that man was in his head, and remembered the impermanence of life.

On our way to the next store, our final stop, my energy picked up some and we spoke about how I was feeling. Alex asked (again) how I was. I asked if he had a guess.

"Probably not the best," he said. I told him that was a good guess and gazed out the window. I wasn't being particularly forthright, but I wasn't trying to be snarky. I just wasn't feeling very much like talking. I was glad he asked.

In this larger store, my mood was a bit brighter, and so were the florescent lights. I felt overwhelmed and was glad Alex was there. We made a good team. He navigated us through the store, while I held the shopping list and occasionally picked something off the shelf for us. When we made it to the checkout, there were long lines at every station. Someone walked past, sighing as they turned back around to try for a shorter line at another station. We debated going to self-checkout, but decided we weren't up for it because we were mostly buying produce. I was sure we could do it, but was happy not to try today.

The line we chose was probably the shortest, but there were two people with full carts in front of us, pushing us back in between two aisles. Alex and I hugged each other while we waited, and expressed our gratitude for the ease that being together brought to this shopping experience.

Alex looked up and noticed a large plush fluffball with legs at the top of the aisle end beside us. "Well look who it is," he said playfully as he reached up to rescue the big stuffy. Even with Alex's long arms, it was a bit of a stretch and strain.

Worth it though. It turned out to be a giant plush sloth! I'm not sure how it got up there, face down on the tippy top shelf next to the chips and laundry soaps. Alex gave 'em a hug, his eyes big as he awwed.

Alex set our new friend down next to us on a conveniently high stack of boxed cans. Our friend slumped over at first, his bum being a bit too big for the arrangement of boxes he was topping.

"Let's set you up nicely, there you go." I moved a couple of boxes so he had a nice seat to rest and look on at the humans sighing through their masks.

The sloth smiled at me from his throne, and I smiled back. Alex and I moved ahead in line, and I began to notice the mom and her child in the line next to ours. She was exasperated and anxiously sighed while she glanced at the time on her phone. Her kid was cute, and must have quietly asked her if they could get the sloth to bring home. I heard her answer, "Oh, it's probably just for decoration." Good excuse, mom.

I smiled to myself, thinking about the joy this simple and small act of propping up this sweet and soft stuffed animal would bring to the children and adults passing through these lines today.

An old woman with sad eyes stood in front of me in line, she was turned to look at her husband who was directly (6ish feet) in front of me. I wondered what she was thinking or feeling, and what they were talking about. Her eyes looked so sad and somewhat confused. Concern marked her brow and her eyes were glassy, as though she might cry. Her husband was saying something to her while trying to fix her mask so it covered more of her face.

When Alex and I finally made it to the edge of the conveyor belt, we began to set our things on, starting with two huge blue storage tubs he had picked out for himself. I read the headlines of the tabloids on the rack next to me aloud, laughing at the absurdity as I picked one up and flipped through pages for a moment.

Even the tabloid headlines are encouraging today - or at least not too depressing. Things are looking up!

The conveyor belt moved forward, and the big blue tubs bumped the covid-proofing pane, threatening to knock it out of place. They were farther ahead than we were now, and I quietly joked to Alex that it looked like they might take down the plexiglass.

The woman with the sad eyes swiftly and gracefully moved the bins over away from the clear plane, fixing the problem without being asked.

We soon reached the front of the line and as the cashier was ringing up our items Alex must have asked "how are you?" He's so good at asking that.

"Oh, you know, living the dream." The cashier's tone was sarcastic and you could tell it had already been a long day for her. "How are you?" She asked, facing me while I readied my wallet to pay (I had been too slow at the last place).

"Oh, well, living the dream!" I said, equally playfully, but more genuinely. I was smiling through my mask, and I could tell she was too. We both laughed.

Alex and I stumbled through card-swiping for a moment, before the cashier asked me, "Are you really living the dream, or..?"

"Well," I laughed, looking at Alex. His eyes seemed curious what I might say. "if we want to get philosophical about it, we could say that we're all living a dream."

With a brief pause and a chuckle, she said, "I'm ready to wake up now."

"What do you want to wake up to?" I asked. She didn't have a response, and I said something about "maybe when we know what we want to wake up to is when we'll be ready to."

I think it was in that moment that I realized this is what I wanted to write about. Because I want to wake up to a world where people are smiling and doing kind deeds for one another, just because it makes the world a better place to live. That's the world I want. And I know I have power to influence the world in this way, to make it more likely and possible for myself and others to experience the joy that kindness brings.

By doing the first small thing I see, like rescuing a family's jar of salsa, or a smiley plush sloth. By doing a good deed, even when I'm sad - maybe even especially then. When I feel hopeless, or down. That's when I can remember that I am not alone, and that my actions can shape the world.

Thank you for reading, and for doing your good deeds. Keep doing them, because you never know how much good you will do with just one small act of kindness.