on my first day of living in new york; i was carrying my worldly possessions in a trio of jumbo suitcases and i was having difficulty carrying them up the subway stairs to the street and blocking the path for everyone else. two people – wordlessly and zero eye contact – each took a suitcase out of my hand and carried it up to the top of the stairs, dropped them off where i can resume rolling them and walked away.

not a single “let me help you” or “do you need some help?”; they saw the situation and decided that helping me would help everyone else and simply did it.

this was before smartphones became a thing so i doubt that this could still happen because people’s faces are too buried in screens to notice others anymore.

We did a little tour on our own into Germany one spring, about 20 years ago. It was only a few days, we didn’t have much money and we absolutely didn’t know what we were doing. We rented a car and just started wandering. It was just at the point of technology where GPS was still new. We didn’t have any so we just started driving with a shitty map and no clue.

We had done some traveling in other countries before and we had met several famously obnoxious German tourists. We had partly expected to meet equally arrogant Germans in their home country.

Instead we met the most open, kind hearted, brilliant people ever. Everywhere we stopped, we’d meet three or four locals who were more than happy to give directions, recommend restaurants, bars, tea shops and sites to see.

At one point we met a truck driver who gave us a ton of information and showed us a driving route on a big format ringed binder map book. When he was done talking, he left the book. We told him he was forgetting his book and he said we could have it as it had detailed updated map info of the entire country. It was an expensive book and I knew it, so I told him not to give it away. He insisted and said he didn’t mind.

I still have that map book on my shelf and whenever I see it, I think of that trip and all those people we met.

Totally loved Germany after that.

Years ago I was working in retail, specifically a computer store. The work was boring, the customers were either rude, dismissive or both and of course, this took a toll on general morale, myself included. It didn’t help that the neighboring store had, like, three songs on loop which drove every employee in earshot crazy, but that’s beside the point.

One Thursday afternoon, it was business as usual. My coworkers took the day off, so I was alone, behind the till, re-evaluating my life choices and the store was empty, save for an occasional window shopper. It was December and the neighboring store changed their regular their regular short playlist of songs for another a completely different (but just as short!) Christmas-themed playlist. On loop again, of course. The store I was working in didn’t have a dress code, so I wore my usual get-up: jeans and whatever T-shirt I grabbed in the morning. That day I was wearing one that my parents brought from France with this picture printed on.

While nurturing my newfound hatred for retail, a shy-looking girl came in, looking for a USB stick. I went through the usual motions, suggesting brands, explaining the differences all while trying to be as cordial as possible. She decided on a brand, so we moved to the register to finish the transaction. As I was printing the receipt, I got a simple “I like your shirt”.

This caught me off-guard. I never received compliments while working. It was… nice. It took me a few seconds to compose myself again. After, I thanked her for the compliment, gave her the receipt and the item she bought and wished her a pleasant day. That girl genuinely made my day and I still think back on that interaction fondly.

I was fresh of the plane moving to London and was lugging a massive and heavy suitcase up the stairs in the tube. Now, mind you, Londoners are exceptional commuters and I must have interrupted the proper flow, but one of them, very smartly dressed in a three piece sutie, just grabbed my suitcase with one hand, and left it up the staircase, kept on going at a brisk pace, not a single world, not a single glance. To this day, I’m not sure if it was kindness or sheer irritation at my cluelessness about Tube etiquette. Either way, it still makes me laugh every time I think about it.

One time I went to the store to pick up a few things for diner. I went to pay and realized i didn’t have my wallet. The person in line behind me immediately told the cashier they were covering my order. I was very grateful.

a lady in the grocery store once told me i look really nice today.

Can’t remember any acts of kindness towards me. Only shit I do myself on a daily basis unto others, like oh I dunno, signal my turns, hold doors for people, say hello to someone who looks like they might need some human interaction. Stuff that should be commonplace, but people live in their asshat bubbles thinking about their own asshat lives instead of being just a little bit decent toward the rest of us asshats.

Goddammit. It’s not hard.

I have a friend who worked in Oman for several years. My wife and I went to visit, and the three of us were going to get dinner somewhere. We ended up parking somewhere that wasn’t free, but wasn’t horribly expensive either (honestly, paying for parking is pretty uncommon there from what I saw). Payment was only done in coins or through mobile. Paying with our phones didn’t work, and we only had paper bills, so I went into a small shop asking if they could give me coins for a small bill.

I can’t remember what the shop was for, but it wasn’t anything touristy. Oman is very highly developed, but I’m always mindful about the privilege I have to travel internationally as an American. They said I could pay through mobile, which I said didn’t work. The employee walked outside, asked which car was ours, and plugged our license plate into his phone. How long will we stay? Couple hours. Ok, you’re all set. Cool! How much do we owe you? It’s ok. No, we can pay you. No, it’s ok.

He just would not take payment. Even if it was a small thing, the context and optics meant so much to me at the time. If you ever get a chance to go to Oman, I would strongly recommend it before the tourists take over.