Friday's Giving

Today I took a nice long walk in my hometown of Berkeley, California and had a few run-ins with acts of kindness.

As I walked through a residential area, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of cars that stopped for me to cross the street. Not only did the cars stop for me, but the drivers often waved me across the street with a smile. Unknowingly, these drivers brightened my day! After living in India for two months, a place where pedestrians do not have the right of way, EVER, and I felt like I was in a game of Frogger every time I crossed the busy streets, this contrast of having cars stop for me was quite a shock and put a smile on my face. It felt good to know that these strangers felt like I was important enough for them to stop their cars and let me cross. Instead of blowing off a stranger, they decided to interact with me in a positive way and I am happy about that. It shows that people other than the givers who are posting on this blog are giving.

Once I got to a more urban area, I decided to check each parking meter as I walked by and put a few coins into meters that had less than 10 minutes in them. I noticed that all the cars that had handicapped stickers did not have money in their meters – I think they don’t have to pay for metered parking? So I stopped putting coins in the handicapped parked car meters.

I met up with a giver friend at Pete’s coffee and we bought a muffin for the homeless man sitting outside and sat down and talked to him. While we were talking he got a call on his cell phone (hmmm, a homeless guy with a cell phone…?) and he got a construction job for tomorrow! Great news! I was so happy to share this moment with him in his life. He was smiley and that put him in a much better mood. He said although it was just a one time job, at least it was some income. Great outlook on life considering he is homeless.

Then, the giver I was with and I picked some flowers off the street. We walked around downtown and offered them to people. Not a single person accepted a flower! It was quite discouraging. Some people just said, “No” while others said, “No, but thank you. They are beautiful.” We had one person say, “No, what would I do with a flower?” That hit me hard. ‘What would you do with a flower?’ ‘What would you do with a flower?’

I think flowers are beautiful and I thought more people would accept them, to put in their hair or just to hold, but no, we did not get any of that. So we left flowers on people’s cars at the CVS store near by.