Little-Big Acts of Kindness

Recently I started a new job. Whilst this doesn’t particularly sound like a great feat, after being made redundant at the start of lockdown then spending eight months feeling isolated and scraping by as I searched for work in a world that had shut down… starting in this new role has thrown me a lifeline I was beginning to think I would never get and has given me a reason to get up in the morning; albeit, very early!

I mention my new job because of a man I met, who I’ll probably never see again, that made a big impact on me. During one of my first shifts, when I was yet to have completed the training for my specific role, I found myself greeting customers as they arrived on our premises. “Hello, how are you? Have you got your Christmas shopping sorted yet?” Pretty standard stuff.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent the first hour of this, ecstatic that I was finally getting to talk to people again! It felt like it had been a long while since I’d done so much socialising in such a short space of time, and I loved it. By the third hour however, once the novelty has worn off and you really begin to feel the constant stream of cold air rushing through the open doors, all of the faces you see start to blur into one.

It was at this point that a man wandered in. Initially entering behind a large cluster of excited Christmas shoppers, becoming camouflaged within their group, he only emerged when they inevitably dispersed, heading in different directions.

He grasped hold of a basket, a routine action that wouldn’t require much deliberation, and he began to walk, on autopilot, in my general direction; staring straight through those who passed him by.

“Good morning! How are you?”

He stops. Looking at me, and then down at his basket. For a moment, it seems as if he doesn’t know what to do. As if I have broken a train of thought or found an invisible off-switch that has resulted in him powering down in the middle of the shop like something out of a bad sci-fi movie. The silence is killing me! Then, he bursts into tears!

I’m taken aback by this action and we step to the side as I ask if he is okay. He tells me that his mother has just died, and he is clearly distraught by this. Amidst the condolences I give him and the general words of empathy that anybody would want to give another person who’d found themselves in such a situation, I ask him if he has anybody to go home to. He says no.

What really got me was how much he kept apologising to me for being so upset. How often he attempted to justify what had happened and rationalise the death to himself for the comfort of those around him.

So many of us go through periods in which we feel isolated. We don’t particularly have to be alone, like this gentleman, to experience those sharp pangs in our chests alongside negative thoughts that tell us we have no one to turn to. This is especially true around religious holidays that usually entail large gatherings of our loved ones coming together to have a great time and enjoy each other’s company. Having struggled with negative thought processes myself, I have come to realise that, above everything else, it is the absence of hope which sends a lot of us spiralling into dark places and prevents us from seeing a way out of the pit we seem to have become immobilised in.

Adversely, I strongly believe, that it has been the actions of others (big or small; friend, family, or stranger) which have helped me regain my strength and, eventually, pull myself out of there. Of course, as many of us will attest, it isn’t always as simple as that. We may not always be in the right headspace to take in the good deeds of others right away, or even be in a place to recognise how much love and care is pouring out of our peers. We may have come to believe that we no longer have anybody in our corner, or never did. It may, in fact, take quite a while before we begin to notice that the positive thoughts, we have about ourselves, have started to outweigh the negative ones. But every kind action, whether it be a grand gesture, small acts of care by others (or even by ourselves), slowly build us up and give us something to hold onto when times are hard.

I must not have ended up spending more than fifteen minutes with the man who had confided in me that day. I most definitely wouldn’t have come close to solving all of his problems. But, at the very least, I gave him an opportunity to unburden himself in a non-judgemental space. To let him know that even when the situation seems dire that there will always be someone out there willing to lend an ear, to give him back a small sense of hope. Speaking to him got me thinking of all the ways that others have both knowingly and unknowingly helped me. It made me feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude to the people around me.

For the purpose of this piece of writing, I wanted to extend that feeling of gratitude to all of those who have, in some way, had an effect on my life. I asked a group of people to think about some of the nicest things that others have done for them. This would all be anonymous, with their first name being used only in a small paragraph at the end to thank them. Even if they didn’t end up contributing, I felt that it would be an exercise that might at least get them thinking about some of the good memories they have.

To start this off, I would like to thank everybody who has taken the time to listen to me when times are hard, to encourage me to continue going after my dreams when it has seemed impossible, have made me feel valued and have reminded me that there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel; even if it takes a while to find!

It is important to note that though the contributions below are not verbatim, every effort has been taken to stay true to their original message.

Without further ado… 12 messages of gratitude about the good deeds we have experienced from others for the 12 days of Christmas (plus three more, because we don’t exclude anybody in these articles)!

1. Thank you to the nurse who sensed I was near breaking point when my partner had had to be rushed into the hospital, after being sick for a long time, for an emergency operation a few years back. She took me into her office for a chat and made me a cup of tea. It might seem like a small gesture but, at the time, it made all of the difference. Choosing a moment to put forward for this article got me thinking that there might be some hope in human kindness after all.

2. Thank you to the lady on the train in London, who, during the 2018 heatwave, saw how uncomfortable I was, that I was struggling to breathe, and gave me her little beige fan. It had been during the time of the Wimbledon Championship Final which had made things a whole lot hotter with crowds on the public transport. This woman didn’t make what was happening to me a big deal, and I felt no judgement for sweating so much in the heat. I still have the little fan now and use it today!

3. Thank you to my dad, who modified my pole equipment and set it up in the garden so that I could keep fit and continue practising during the lockdown!

4. Thank you to the man who paid for my drink and wished me a happy Christmas before walking back to wherever he was stationed. I had been seeing some friends a few years back and we were in central London, meaning that the drinks weren’t exactly cheap! It was a lovely show of Christmas spirit.

5. Thank you to my Auntie and Uncle who paid for my school trip to New York. I’d tried to get them to take it back as I hadn’t asked them to do it. But they didn’t and it was so kind of them.

6. Thank you to the unexpected person at school, who found me crying in the toilets when my mental health was particularly bad and comforted me. They stayed with me, talked to me, and even hugged me. I didn’t expect it, but it was nice.

7. Thank you to an old friend who was the only one of my colleagues to have bought me a present for my birthday in the seven years I’d worked there. The gift and the card were lighthouse themed; something that holds a lot of sentimental value to me and was based off a game we both used to play. It was a shock to receive the gift and it has since become something that reminds me of better times.

8. Thank you to my children who have kept my spirits up during difficult times. Particularly during a hard period at work, when a previous Area Manager at the company I am a part of would consistently use fear and intimidation as a means of leading the teams.

9. Thank you to the guy at work (who I’d only had one conversation with), that asked around to find out what the perfect gift for me would be for Secret Santa! He ended up getting me two poetry books which were both perfect. It was so wholesome!

10. Thank you to the random stranger who bought me lunch the day I’d miscounted the amount of change I thought I’d had.

11. Thank you to the friend, who told me at the last minute, that she had decided to come and see me. She’d travelled at least two and a half hours to get here and had organised a whole birthday do for me! I never usually celebrate my birthdays, so this was really special to me.

12. Thank you to the customer I met on my first day, who was lovely to me even though I couldn’t help her as effectively as I’d wanted to as I was still making sense of things myself. She thanked me for being a Key Worker during this pandemic which made me feel very appreciated.

13. Thank you to my dad, who took me on one of the most incredible road trips around Scotland when I was a kid. We went to Oban, Nairn, Inverness, Glasgow… to name a few. We set up camp, fires and foraged for food at each place that we went to, only staying at a hotel in one area near the end of the trip. Each location that we trekked to had been a place that my dad had visited when he had been a child. We’d ended up having such a good time that we stayed an extra week! It’s a really great memory for me and just an all-round fantastic thing for a kid to experience.

14. Thank you to my staff who decided to secretly surprise me when I came back from a trip to Wellington. They knew that I had been having a stressful time at work and had taken the trouble to go through my bins in order to find out what I liked to eat and drink!

15. Thank you to my friends who have collectively made me feel like who I was as a person didn’t make me a waste of oxygen, and that my opinions were actually valid. I’d been feeling that so many people were trying to pull me down for who I was, as well as what my beliefs and interests were. But having their emotional support and knowing that I wasn’t alone has made me feel confident in myself again.

Finally, in no particular order, a BIG thank you to: Beth, Toby, Adrian, Heidi, Chris, Heather, Clare, Emil, Melanie, Georgia, Dawid, Shanna, Grace, Devin and Zarina! Without them, this article would not exist.

Reading these contributions lifted my spirits and made Christmas during lockdown infinitely better. It is my hope that shining a spotlight on the good things that have happened to us all this year, goes a small way towards making us more optimistic for the new year ahead. Or at the very least, gives us the ammunition we need to make our way through any rough seas that come our way.