Day 6

Today's favor was about being humble. I received a request asking me to buy three strangers a cup of coffee. I wrestled with how to accomplish this task and ultimately decided to choose an option allowing for anonymity. After an amazing evening of seeing friends, I went into a small coffee shop, far away from my usual routine and ordered a cup of coffee. While paying, I told the clerk to please use the extra 20 single bills given to him towards the next three cups of coffee purchased by the next three people behind me in line. He looked at me puzzled for a moment and then smiled warmly . He asked what he should say to the three customers and I said to say, "This is a favor from someone wishing him or her a great day." I asked him to create some sort of distraction allowing me time to leave before the next order got rung-up. He smiled again and nodded.

As I stood outside under the awning, peering through the window behind my aviator frames, I saw the genuine displays of surprise and delight as the clerk repeated word-for-word what I said. Each favor recipient was similar to one another in the order of expressed emotion: confusion, surprise, happiness. It was only a small act of kindness and what occured to me was that if this small act caused such joy, imagine the impact and effect on the whole of our global community if each day each person received one kind act without needing to ask for a favor. So often we find ourselves saying, "I don't have enough time." How does one define enough? Is there really a day ever in which we do not have "enough" time to be kind? Being kind means meeting another where he or she is at in life. It means not expecting another to be different; it means embracing another as a part of you. You don't have to buy a stranger coffee, but you can; you don't have to be humble, but you can; you don't have to be a part of something bigger than yourself, but you can. It is a small shift in energy to go from scarcity of internal resources to abundance. We all have and we all deserve an abundance of kindness. Let's start each day by accessing that abundance and see where our kindness takes us!