Widening The Ripple

A few weeks ago, a friend shared a poster on Facebook that said; ‘Sometimes I just want someone to hug me and say, “I know it’s hard. You’re going to be okay. Here’s chocolate and 6 million dollars.”

So I ducked into the grocery store and grabbed a few blocks of nice chocolate and sent it to her with a note saying “I can’t do anything about the hug or the 6 million dollars BUT I can send you chocolate.”

She was very touched and sent me a lovely message of thanks.

Fast forward 6 weeks or so and I get a message from my friend (she is a community care nurse) about a client of hers who is a collector. He is elderly and of ill health, suffering from dementia but loves talking about his collections and where they come from etc. So my friend wanted to do something nice for him and found some items to add to his collection and took them to him. She almost didn’t go through with it but after my recent kindness to her, and knowing how good it had felt, she was compelled to continue the ripple! She surprised him with some collectables and said his face lit up like a child at Christmas and that he remained engaged and enthusiastic the whole time she was there.

She went on to say she knows I do other acts of kindness and wanted me to know that what I have done for others has a very positive effect. It was a really powerful moment for me to hear about the positive impact my one small act has had. This is the reason we should all share our kind acts, not because we want to ‘blow our own horns’ but to inspire others to think of little things they can do. These acts do continue, they don’t stop with us and people need to know that the nice things we do have an impact far greater than we perhaps dream they could! – Amanda 😀