What if we all did “random acts of kindness” as a regular sort of business, something that we all expected all day every day. Would we still call them “random”? Would they still hold the fascination for us that they do now? What if random were the norm?
Over in Japan, there’s a little restaurant known as the Kashiwa Mystery Cafe (officially, the Orgori Cafe) where one orders food, and pays for it, that is then delivered to the person in line behind you. That means that you get to eat whatever the person in front of you ordered and paid for. If the person ahead of you ordered a caramel mocha latte, that’s what you get for lunch. On the other hand, if they ordered a chicken teriyaki bento box complete with spicy tuna sushi roll and sunomono with abalone and shrimp, that’s just what you’d get! I really like this concept. It would make me think twice before I’d order just a cup of tea for the man standing behind me. In fact, I might want to order the yummiest food on the menu, in the hopes that the person in front of me was thinking the same way! Those clever Japanese, anyway….
A lot of us have done things that would probably “qualify” for this random acts idea, such as paying the bridge toll for the person behind us in the queue, buying a cup of coffee for the guy sitting on the curb outside the cafe, picking the roses in our front yard to give away to strangers on the street, buying an extra sandwich at lunch and giving it to the panhandler on the corner. But what of other random acts? What else is there that we could consider “random” and that we could arbitrarily give away?
Simple things like a smile and a nice word to the cashier at the grocery store who seems to be having a tough day can really make a difference to someone and we might not even know it. The seeds of kindness that we plant with our random acts will be watered and sprouted by people and events that we have no idea about.
There’s a whole organization devoted to this idea and they have a website where, if you can’t think of any on your own, you can get ideas of random acts to commit. There’s even a page for teachers and a random idea of the day which today is talking to a homeless person. CLICK HERE to check out their website.
So my challenge to myself and to you today: go out and see just how many random acts of kindness you can do today. Then click here and let them know that you’re joining them in making the word a more pleasant place to be today. Yes, we can change the world with some kindness!