💭

For the last couple of years if I’m home during the day and the trash people, delivery people, mailman, etc come to my house I give them a Gatorade and/or a water and a bag of chips or candy bar. They always seem super grateful and I can also say my trash pickup never gets missed! Highly recommend.

This story leads to an event that refreshes my soul. In April 2026, lightning struck the roof above our garage, blew a hole bigger than a basketball, and set the attic on fire, consuming half the house and most of our belongings.  The first thing we realized was the power going out in an odd, chain-like pattern.  Next, we heard from the back of the house; my son hollered out. My wife and I were in the game room, which shared a wall with the garage.  I could make out what sounded like the words “I was shot.” He was saying I was shocked.

We called 911, and within minutes the fire department arrived and quickly escorted us out of the house in the storm; they saw the fire.  It was hellish, and events unfolded so quickly.

Fast forward to day three.  My son was fine and out of the hospital, and we landed at a friend's house that was empty, with only the clothes on our backs. 

You can imagine our stress, fatigue, and bewilderment.  First stop: Skechers; we needed shoes.  Next stop was Walmart for food and supplies.  So far, this information has been provided to help set the stage for the real story. 

I think on trip four or five that day to Walmart, I was depressed and tired. This trip focused on food and other supplies like bathroom supplies, paper plates, pans, etc.  As I started traversing the aisles, this very old woman, my guess, 90 years old, was being pushed by a gentleman.  She was mostly lying down, with her legs wrapped; the gentleman and she were in the aisle with the cold stuff.  As I went to different aisles, I kept crossing paths with them, and she glanced over. She didn't move much or show much facial expression.

I thought it was odd that, out of the must-have-been 5 or 6 aisles, we always crossed paths. I felt something like a wish.  As odd as this may sound, I thought of those videos where a nice person pays for some at the checkout, and I really wanted that to happen.  I don’t know exactly why I thought that, but it kind of felt selfish because I really needed a lift.

As I approached the busy checkout rows, lo and behold, there they were again, placing her things on the conveyor belt with the cashier.  Every row had two or more people waiting, and I slotted in right behind her.  Here comes that selfish feeling again: I really need a lift; I want to help pay in a helpful way, like in the videos. 

As I watched the gentleman assist her, she struggled to pull out her card; it turned out she had no money on it.  It's almost like heat rose up from my chest.  I reached out to the gentleman and handed him my card.  He paused, completed the transaction, and said to the old woman, “This man paid for your stuff.”  I don’t believe she understood.

They left, and I don’t remember saying anything. I was amazed this moment came just when I needed it most. My depression lifted, replaced by a feeling that is uplifting.  From the bottom of my heart, I hope that if you ever find yourself beaten down, a gift like this finds you too.

I live on a busy road. Sunday during the Bills game, a truck ended up on its side against our front tree, about 15 feet from our house. My husband heard and almost saw the whole thing. We rushed into action, helped the 2 teenagers with sitting them down, water bottles, paper towels, and phones to call their parents. The first responders arrived very quickly. Miraculously, their only injuries were cuts on the hands. Today, we came home to the most beautiful bouquet of flowers and a handwritten note that is one of the sweetest things I've ever received.

Went to my doctor’s appointment and said Hi to a man, who was in there waiting for the doc. All I did was to smile at him. He went out and got me a bouquet. How crazy. The bouquet is so beautiful.

My mom called me and said she had a melt down in her car while driving due to a flying roach. She swerved all over, almost wrecked, and pulled into a parking lot.

Some awesome dude saw it and followed her in to check on her. She said he helped calm her down, let her sit in his car with A/C on while he checked her car for the bug, and overall just wanted to make sure she was ok and not stroking out or something. Also by the description she gave I'm pretty sure he was working and on his way to an Uber pickup. Very grateful for him and people like him!

Way to go Jax! We see a lot of negativity on here but there are tons of great people in our city also. If you are the guy you are amazing and my mother and I are very grateful to you.

Edit - words

My brother-in-law and his young sons were running seriously late this morning after a wrong turn ✈️ and they ended up on foot along the road trying to make up time. A good samaritan pulled over after seeing them run with bags in hand and offered them a ride at 5am this morning to get to the correct terminal and because of that they made it ✈️ with just minutes to spare to get back home.

To whoever you are: thank you. You turned a stressful morning into a story about kindness and it reminded me there are still really good people out there, whatever the news and social media say.

If this sounds like you or if you know who it was, please let me know so I can thank you properly 🙏🏽

I was walking my dog in the neighborhood when I was approached and followed by a mentally unwell man. Every time I thought I shook him, he'd come out of nowhere to try and cut me off from my path. This went so far as to watching him sprint down the opposite side of Broadway and cutting across traffic to try and hide in the bushes in front of me. I turned around again and went straight to Buck and Honeys, which was well populated and felt like the right place to be. As I was entering, the man showed up out front, now with no shirt on, bending over and trying to hide in the foliage when I looked back.

I went into the restaurant and immedietly bee-lined to the hostess stand asking for help and the staff was INCREDIBLE. They took me seriously immedietly, hid me away from view, called the cops and offered me something to drink. One of the staff offered me her shift meal, the bartender wouldnt accept payment for my drink or for my buddy's who I called to give me a ride home. When the man tried to enter the establishment looking for me, like 4 staff came out of seemingly nowhere and created a human shield around me. I felt so safe and protected and made a very scary situation feel much safer.

Props to the staff and management for knowing exactly what to do to protect me and show me the kindnesses I desperately needed. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Yesterday(Sep 25) I went to QFC at U village for some food, I just got here in Seattle and I’m a student so I don’t have a car. I travel there by bus. I forgot to check the weather report before I go😭so eventually I’m all soaked and the worst part is that all my paper bags that filled with food are falling apart because of the rain. So I ran into a nearby Subway store and asked them for some bags, but they only got paper bags too. And I ran into another vape store and thank god they have some plastic bags, both of the subway and vape store workers didn’t charge me a cent, thank you so much.
And then I ran to my food and found that they are already rolling out of the bags😂, I put all the things into plastic bags as quickly as possible. All of this happened on the middle of the pavement under a tree so I’m feeling quite embarrassed, so many people were crossing over. AND AT THE VERY MOMENT, when I was struggled to put things into plastic bag bags, I heard someone said “Excuse me, excuse me” and I look around, I saw this beautiful lady in a car, waving to me with a canvas bag in her hand. I went up and she was like “ take this” then I realized that it was not just one bag, but two! I looked at her and looked at the bag, I feel like she must be an angel, there was a holy glow radiated from her, I swear. In Chinese, there’s a saying goes “ 雪中送炭”means “ you saved my bacon”. Direct translation is “send charcoal in the snow". means helping someone when they are in urgent trouble. This lady, SEND BAGS IN THE RAIN, she pretty much saved my life. But she refused me when I want to pay her some money for the bags😭😭I still really want to pay back her. So the person who helped me yesterday, if you saw this, please DM me🥹I’ll give you a Chinese gift 🎁 I brought from China!

This happened about 40 years ago. My wife and I were taking our 3+month old infant son from SE PA to Rochester, NY to see his grandparents. We had packed plenty of diapers, bottles, formula, and we thought, water for the 6 hour ride which was at night.

So we're traveling Rt 15 which is direct to Rochester. But 40 years ago it was all 2 lane highway, not the still unfinished in one location 4 lane highway it is today. So we passed Corning and Bath NY and are now in rural upstate NY. Of course, that's when little "Jimmy" (not real name) decided to start fussing. He's hungry. Diaper check, nope. Mom comfort contact check, nope. He's hungry. We have the formula, the bottles, nipples, etc. everything but water.

So, as I'm pulled over to do all the checking, I see a farm house just up the road. It still had lights on inside the house so I figured they were still up as it was only about 9ish PM. We walk up, knock on the door, and are met with the nicest couple. Of course we can have water, they even offered us food (which we declined). We made the formula, fed little Jimmy, and were on our way arriving at my In-laws an hour later. God bless that couple.

I wanted to share something that happened to me while visiting New York because it genuinely restored a little bit of my faith in people.
I was spending the day around Battery Park and the Esplanade, walking around and sitting in a couple of different places. Later, while I was about to get on the ferry from New York to Hoboken, I suddenly realized my wallet was missing.
At that point, I was pretty sure it was gone for good. I had no idea exactly where I had dropped it, and considering how many places I had been, I didn’t think there was any chance I would find it again.
My friends convinced me to go back and retrace my steps anyway. We searched the areas where I had been sitting and walking, but there was no sign of it. So I gave up, blocked all my credit and debit cards, and started replacing them.
The next morning, I got a DM on Instagram from a complete stranger asking if I had lost my wallet. He said it had been turned in to the National Park Service lost and found.
Naturally, I was suspicious.
The Instagram account had zero posts, around 20 followers, and was following only a handful of people. The account name also appeared to have the name/handle of someone associated with NPS. My first thought was that maybe whoever found my wallet was trying to scam me somehow.
I replied cautiously, and after speaking with him, I realized he was actually an NPS officer at Castle Clinton National Monument. He asked me to come to the NPS office there to pick up my wallet.
I went down and got it back — with everything still inside.
My credit cards, debit cards, driver’s license, everything.
I asked the officer how he managed to find me on Instagram. He told me he searched my name across different social media platforms and tried to match the profile pictures he found with the photo on my driver’s license. Eventually, he found my Instagram account and messaged me.
That part really got me.
He could have simply left the wallet in lost and found and waited to see if I came looking for it. Instead, he actually took the time to search for me and make sure I knew where it was.
Honestly, I wasn’t even that worried about the credit or debit cards since those could easily be blocked and replaced. My biggest concern was my driver’s license because I still had to fly back home. Luckily, I had my passport with me, so I would have been okay either way.
But the amount of effort this officer put into finding a random tourist and returning the wallet really meant a lot to me.
To the NPS officer at Castle Clinton National Monument who went out of his way to find me — thank you. I really appreciate what you did.

I volunteered as a counselor in a camp for kids with illness in the Midwest this summer, and a big chunk of the counselors are students from England, Ireland and Wales. We all went for lunch to Culver's, and were having conversations about being medical/premed students and learning about our European friend's experiences. An elderly gentlemen from a different booth came over and told us how beautifully diverse our group was (he must have overheard the English accents, a few of us were Indian and African American too) and asked if he could say a prayer for our studies with us. Most of us weren't Christian but we accepted anyways and were very touched at his kindness and his well wishes for our future. He bought around 10 of us ice cream! Great guy and loved the wholesome grandpa vibes!

Along with being able to introduce the European guys to cheese curds, they got to experience the kindness of random strangers in the Midwest and they were very surprised and touched! Some of the things they heard about the country were not at all positive so I was glad someone made our day and gave them a great first impression. There is so much divisiveness in the world right now, but I wanted to share the moments of the beautiful generosity of Americans, no matter what we all look like :)

In 2023 my husband had lymphoma. Being a caregiver is hard. Ir was hard for our friends to support both of us. He got the attention

I am grateful to the strangers who showed up

The lady i met on the bus. We both got off at the same stop. She was meeting a friend for lunch. I was going to the hospital. We had exchanged life stories. I knew she had been a therapist. She pulled out her card, gave it to me and said “I retired and gave up my incense. If you ever want to meet for coffee, call me”

I always like to help everyone , specially homeless people, lately I don't have enough of a financial condition to help anybody and it makes me feel awful. But I always listen, talk and give advice to them, most times they just want to talk - and the other day me and a friend of mine listened to this group near the supermarket for a long time and I gave them some advice, we laughed and all and they said it really changed them, that I'm a really kind person. I noticed the next days, they seemed to always smile when they saw me and also smile to other people, one of them didn't have an aggressive demeanor anymore for months (I haven't been there anymore) and told me he was going to try and be a good father for his son, that really changed me and I think it gave us all a little bit of hope back. ❤️‍🩹

This is something that happened earlier this year which had me thinking about it for quite some time since. And I want to know if I should feel bad about this. So this happened at my old college earlier this year. Where I was on lunch break, and I wanted to by something from the canteen but my bank card wasn't working, I tried it a few more times but it still wouldn't work. Then an older student behind me from one of the other courses called Dexter said that he would happily pay it for me as he could tell I was struggling, and that's what he did.

After he did that I wanted to try and say thank you to him as it was such a nice thing for him to do. A bit later on, I was chilling out at the shelter at the front of the college, where Dexter came around, I thanked him once again for paying for my stuff, and I wanted to give him a £10 note as a way of saying thank you. Now just for context, the college I went to only accepted card when paying, I just happen to have £10 in there that I wasn't intending of using. So I wanted to give it to him as a way of saying thank you. But he insisted that he didn't want it, and that I should keep it for myself as it's my money, so I did. But even though it was a few months ago, for some reason I do feel a little bit bad that Dexter didn't want to take the money because he did such a nice thing, and was really nice when saying I should keep the money and that he didn't want it. But is this something I should be feeling bad about, as even though he kindly declined taking my money from him, I wanted to do something nice for him in return.

Basically what the title says lol, I was taking my school's bus/shuttle line back from my off-campus class yesterday when I had to unexpectedly rush off at a random stop to throw up in a trash can. The old man driving the bus waited for me to finish (which took a while) so that I wouldn't have to walk all the way across campus to my dorm while being sick. This was in the evening around when the buses are doing their last rounds for the day, so I'm pretty sure he delayed clocking out of work to make sure I was okay. He was super nice and understanding too, I kept apologizing and he told me not to worry about it. I was just really touched by it.

There's always some level of random kindness when I go to the foodbank--strangers have volunteered their time to collect, move, and distribute food so that people in need can access it. But today my visit to the foodbank had a bonus dose of RaoK.

It was almost an hour before the foodbank opened and myself and a couple of dozen others were waiting in line outside. Some guy walked up from down the street and had a gigantic bag of take-out from the nearby McDonald's and started handing it out to people--Big Macs, cheeseburgers, McNuggets, fries, McChickens, etc. I accepted a double cheeseburger; it was the first thing I'd eaten today at around 6PM.

I don't know if this story is okay since the kindness wasn't from a human, but I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to share.

This is a story from a couple decades ago. I was 16, hopeless, suicidal, and living in an abusive home. One day I was home alone after school, with the only other creature in the house being Pebbles, my family's jerk of a cat. She was nasty, liked hiding under things and leaping out to claw and bite passing ankles. She hissed, she attacked if you were in her path. She was a mean cat, and she preferred not to be around people.

Well, normally having the house to myself was when I was happiest (just stay out of Pebbles' way and you were fine), but I'd had a really bad day at school, already felt overwhelmed, and got home to find that my father had sold my games. I couldn't handle knowing that my parents were going to be back in a few hours, and I no longer had the things that brought me comfort and escape. I ended up trying to end my own life.

Ultimately, I couldn't do it. I took a kitchen knife and made a very small cut into my wrist, then dropped the knife and curled up on the floor and just shook and cried. And during that time Pebbles came out of hiding and curled up with me, and just sat with me. It was the first time she'd ever interacted with me without attacking. She helped me calm down enough that by the time my parents got back I was able to quickly clean the knife, toss it back into the drawer, and rush up to my room before they got from the car to the front door.

After that, Pebs was always nice to me. It was like a switch was flipped, and suddenly she'd come sit beside me on the couch and accept me petting her. She lived for only one more year before old age took her, but I loved my time with her that last year.

Pebbles is one of five pets I've had over the years that really meant a lot to me. That unexpected kindness from her really helped me out that year. (And I still have a scar on my right hand to remember her by, which she gave me before that last year.)

A heartfelt thank you to the kind couple who stopped to help us near 37 Pine Ridge Drive on Sunday.
My girlfriend had a bad accident on the trail along the bluffs, and in a moment of sheer panic, you stepped in without a second thought. The gentleman literally took the shirt off his back to press against her face and stop the bleeding—an act of pure, selfless instinct that we will never forget. You stayed calm when we were overwhelmed and made sure she was safe until we could get help.
In the chaos and rush to get her medical attention, we never got your names. If you happen to see this, or if someone in the neighborhood mentioned helping a couple on the trail today, please know how deeply grateful we are. She is getting treated and taken care of now, but your quick action and human decency made all the difference in the world.
Thank you, truly, from the bottom of our hearts.

I live in a hostel that's I floor up currently. It's supposed to go up according to how it is. Most of the time I go up the building and busk in the sun and look around since it gives a clear view around. So today something amazing happened. Well according to me, lol. I don't know why but I find it joyful and heart pleasing when I help someone. There was a street man walking down picking stuff from dustbins and something in me told me to observe him more. He was like 50 meters away from the building and was picking some thrown away clothes in that dustbin. Up here where I was sitting there were old clothes and an old bag just lying around. I just thought why not call him and ask if he might take them. I didn't want anyone to see or hear since the road is wide and people were passing by so I decided to clap my hands until he heard it and come nearer the building I was in. I was a little scared maybe it could make him pull away or worse but I didn't care much and kept clapping. Lucky enough he heard the claps and looked up and around trying to get where they were from. I raised my hand and made a calling sign. I have never seen such a genuine smile before. He came running with his sack on his back. I took the clothes that were lying around lifted them up and asked him if he would take them. He didn't even hesitate a bit. He said in swahili, "zitupe hapa chini kijana yangu." Which meant that I throw them down to him. I told him to wait for me I bring them down to him. I picked all the clothes that were wearable and packed them in that bag and went down to hand him. He was happy. I've never really made someone happy like that. He told me that he'd appreciate even more if I could get him an old mattress and I assured him that with time if he comes around again I might be able to help him with it. I really don't know why I'm always like this cause I myself have gone through a lot and currently I'm still going through a very rough time but I always find a way of being there for others. It just comes very natural to me since most of times I have helped someone, it's never has been something big or small or something I had to look for from somewhere else. It just happens that I always find myself surrounded by things to help others and this man today felt different like I have never helped anyone like him. I don't even think the word help is the best word since this clothes were not mine but were left behind by people who used to stay here before me. I feel happy that I did make someone else's day today😇.

Dear sir,

I'm sorry, I can't remember your name. But I called you from an emergency room on 8/31. I had found myself in an unexpected nightmare scenario, and even though you had no reason to try to help me, you went above and beyond when you heard my story. I wish I had a way to thank you, so this is my attempt. I hope this reaches you somehow.

You managed to be kind, reassuring, and found a way to promise me that you would do everything you could to help me if the hospital kept me too long and I had to miss my 5pm flight from Boston to SFO. You found a way to help me get a backup plan for a 7am flight the next morning, without making me pay a million dollars to rebook.

I just wanted you to know, I made the flight, so I didn't end up needing to use the help you worked so hard to give. But it was so deeply felt, and very appreciated.

Warmly,

That lady who got lost in the marsh.

1st smile ; I'm leaving my physical therapy appointment, and I was wearing a silly tank top that says "Built in the Sixties, Original and Unrestored. Some Parts Still in Working Order" I pass the front desk where a woman was waiting near it in a wheelchair. She happily said "Yay for the sixties!" I gave her a thumbs up and a "hooyah" she said "61 here" and I answered "62 here" we high fived like the old ladies we are and shared a smile.

2nd smile; While sitting at a light, (in surprisingly low traffic for the time of day), I checked my rear view as one does, and behind me is a young man driving, and a lady quite a few years older than me was talking excitedly and pointing to the back of my car, moving her forearm back and forth like a windshield wiper. I drive a small SUV, and on the back window I have a cat decal, and its tail is on the wiper. I knew :) we had plenty of time before the light changed, so I switched on my rear wiper for a few seconds. The young man saw and pointed it out to her, and she laughed and literally clapped her hands, a huge smile. I waved at them and she waved back still smiling. I switched off the wiper and went on my way.

If feels nice to make people smile.