The Ripple of a Smile

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The day had been just like I did not cause any other start of the day—unsure, late, and hectic. I left my tiny apartment without scarcely grabbing my coat as I strove to reach work in time. The jack frost was in the air and nipped at my cheeks like my pain, while the dull sky was a reflection of the war that was going on in my heart. It was a very heavy week: filled with deadlines and a load of loneliness that sneaked up on me several times a week was ponderously hanging over me.

I had been there, sorrowful, when I was walking to the bus stop, I had been thinking a lot I was so nervous and I could not face the world. It seemed the world was a different place, a foggy one, and I consciously kept my weary legs going. The city's peculiar blend of sounds—the horns honk, the background of people talking in the distance and the whir of engines—merged rhythmically, but the low noisy added to the flatness of hollowness I had in me and in this way t/>/p>

Upon my arrival at the bus stop, I noticed the faces of the people who seemed as tired and as emotionless as me. We were all anonymous people standing in silence, all of us waiting for the bus to come and get us to our separate destinations. I squeezed my scarf as tight as a rope so that I would not be only cold but also isolated, the only feeling that was familiar to me recently.

The bus pulled up with a squeal of brakes, and the crowd started to move. I followed the people blindly, as if I were just a robot programmed to follow their every move as I had done a million times before. I was almost tossed off the bus by a man in a rush, when he pushed me which caused my gloves to fall. I mumbled some things under my breath, and I bent down to pick the gloves up.

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“Over here, let me help you,” a voice wrapped in warmth and kindness said, as it rose above the noise and my irritation.

The woman to whom I was indebted was standing in front of me of about the same age as me. Her lovely face that gave a hint of a smile when she saw me. She leaned down to the ground and picked up one of the gloves and handed it to me. It was a small thing, a plus sign which would be most of the mistakes that people usually miss that in that moment seemed to me like a lifesaver.

My words were a mumble, and my cheeks were a little red from embarrassment.

“It’s no big deal,” she explained her glowing grin still lingering as she moved from my way to let me enter before the rest of the commuters.

My eyes that were initially fixed on her during this time had so adjusted my vision that she appeared to me as a seated creature ahead of me. The-there-was-between-us reality amazed me that one simple thing—picking up gloves someone forgot—became at the same time less and more. There was her modest smile, her making an effort to zero in on me, not robotically as if I were any other ghost on the bus but as someone.

For the remainder of the ride, my thoughts drifted beyond the concerns that had dogged me throughout the morning. Rather, I pondered the depth of a little goodwill, especially on a day when everything seemed to conspire against you. The unclearness from my mind started to dissolve, and I felt a little lighter like the weight of my heart decreased, although not non-significantly.

The performance at work was still very busy, and the deadlines were still close, but my view on life was a bit changed. I was joking more, had better relationships with my colleagues, and was even volunteering off my contract work with tasks I did not own. It was as if the small act of kindness breathed new life into me, an aspect I did not shake off.

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Returning the coffee back to him, it suddenly dawned on me as I experienced how it functioned—this was the magic of what a kind gesture can do. It was a ripple effect that started when somebody would initiate with an act so small and then move outward, touching the lives of the rest of us in ways that we might not even understand.

The bus came along and each of us stepped onto the bus. I found my seat with a feeling of lightness in my chest that I had not felt before. The world seemed a little brighter, a little more connected and I was confident that this soul-warming experience of a small act of kindness would get me through the day just like it had yesterday.

Who knows, maybe it will even be the one who takes the ride.