Random Acts of Kindness

Sometimes, after reading the news or watching CNN (pretty much the only channel I get in English), I get sort of burnt out on humanity. It happened back in college, too, when I was studying past wars and other atrocities (my major was history, and my specialty was cultural/women's history during WWII). I have often said that wars make both the most interesting and the most horrible history. Sometimes I found my studies a bit too much for me emotionally, such as when I was studying the Holocaust in depth - I wound up in tears every day and I couldn't sleep at night. I get horrified whenever I realize that the nations of the world are continually putting more and more money and energy into new ways to destroy each other, while their people starve or battle terminal illnesses that not enough energy and money are going into finding a cure for. Sometimes, it all weighs me down, and I even find myself wondering why we bother to bring more children into the world.

Then come the random acts of kindness and mercy, and the momentous efforts to do good amidst apparently insurmountable odds. I witness, read, and study about them, and suddenly I'm not bogged down, and I know why we keep having children. I remember in college studying about a Nazi officer who saved hundreds of Chinese people from murder at the hands of the Japanese. When he was later nearly dying in poverty in post-war Germany, the Chinese, battling poverty of their own, remembered him and took care of his needs. I remember, too, studying in depth the American nurses who lived a hellish existence in the South Pacific during WWII, were captured by the Japanese and severely mistreated, and then gave medical aid to their captors. The "Candy Bomber" dropped candy from an airplane down to the war-ravaged children during the Berlin Airlift.

When I worked at C.R. Meyer, one of my coworkers was an Army veteran who had served in Korea. He told me about him and several other soldiers giving away their Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to the little Korean children. My Great Uncle Melvin told me about when he served in China during WWII and he and the men he served with took in a little orphaned boy for their entire stay.

Today, I was privileged to witness a few other random acts of kindness. They weren't perhaps on the same scale as the others I've mentioned, but they touched me in a very special way.

The first came in my first kindergarten class. Harry got up when he wasn't supposed to (nothing new there) and wound up hitting his head somehow. Cali and Amy immediately jumped up from their seats and threw their arms around him in an enormous hug. Once they had comforted him, they patted his head tenderly and then sat down. I had to fight to keep from tearing up!

Then in my second kindergarten class, I went around asking each child how they were feeling today (I do that every day with them). When I got to Amber, she informed me that she was "very very sad." I asked why, and she replied, "Because Lynn is sad today." When Lynn started to cry a few minutes later (I have no idea what was wrong, and she didn't know enough English to tell me), her classmates all responded with concern, and a few of them even hugged her.

I wish the adults in this world would take a lesson from my three to five-year-olds.