By Tom Riley on

Daily Acts of Kindness

This post is a reflection for a course I am taking at Renison University College at the University of Waterloo. The course is titled Positive Psychology and is taught by Professor Denise Marigold, currently the Chair of Social Development Studies.

The topic of the reflection is from the course, though the response is my own.

For my reflection this week, I will be engaging in some random acts of kindness and reporting on the results. I like this idea, because despite the stigma I think it would be great if as a society we promoted more kinds acts for each other. I think the idea that someone can derive benefits from helping others is great, and I personally don't see the issue if someone wants to be kind for there one benefit, rather than "pure" altruism.

For each act I will discuss:

and then after I will discuss:

Bringing someone a mattress

So, my first story happened recently but it was actually before the reflection, but I thought it fit well.

So, I go on a lot of walks around the city of Ottawa, and one thing I noticed coming from a small town is how many people who seem to be experiencing homelessness out on the street.

One day I was coming out of the drug store, when someone asked me if I smoked and wanted to buy some cigarettes. I explained that I didn't smoke cigarettes, and they mentioned they were just trying to buy some subway. I offered to buy them some subway, so we went inside and bought some food. As we were chatting, we started talking about cannabis, and my new friend asked if I had any. I offered to drive him to a dispensary that was pretty close by, and I bought him some weed. After we drove back to an abandoned house that he and his girlfriend were staying in. I saw they were just sleeping on a blanket on the floor.

As I was driving home, I remembered that often people would put random furniture behind our building to get picked up. To my luck, someone has left an old futon mattress behind the building. I threw it in the back of my car and went back and gave it to them.

At the start of that day, I wasn't feeling great, and didn't have a lot of motivation to do stuff. I think that is why I jumped at my opportunity to help this guy out. It definitely energized me to chat with this guy, and to be able to make a difference to him with actions that weren't that hard for me, but I hope were helpful to him. He was very grateful, and I could see such a difference in his energy too from when he first stopped me outside the drug store to when I was driving downtown with him and to when I brought him the mattress.

Giving away pillows

At my apartment I have been experiencing some back problems sleeping on an air mattress, so I decided to buy an actual mattress, and while I was at it, I bought some new and better pillows. This left me with a bunch of pillows I don't need anymore.

I figure some of the people I see on the street may be able to use those pillows.

On my walk, as I stopped to talk to some different people out on the street I decided to ask them if they knew anyone that could use some pillows. On my third stop, I talked to this couple on the street and they said they could use the pillows. They said they were out there basically all day every day, so I gave them some cash and finished my walk. Two days later I came back with the pillows and gave them to them.

They were super excited, and you could see their faces light up when they recognized me and saw I had the bag of pillows. It warmed my heart to see their faces, and they told me "god bless you" which was really touching to me.

Buying person behind me coffee

So, this seemed like a pretty straightforward idea. All I have to do is buy the person behind me coffee. As I thought about it I realized that it might be kinda tricky to do the way I normally buy coffee by walking into the shop, and I would have to interrupt someone after they order and offer to pay. I was somewhat worried that might just seem creepy, so I decided to take my roommates car and go through a drive thru.

I pulled into the Tim Horton's drive thru (not where I normally go but it was the closest drive thru). Luckily a white pickup truck pulled in behind me. I ordered a coffee and then when I went to pay, I asked if I could buy the person behind me's order. The cashier looked very confused but agreed. I pulled away.

I would say I didn't really feel good about this after in same way I did after the first two acts. I also have no idea what the guy's reaction was, since I pulled away after. I think that is the problem with this idea, it really takes a lot of leaps of faith to hope that it made some impact on the person. I may try it again in the future, but I think that talking to and helping homeless people feels a lot better.

Discussion

Surprisingly, I would say that the last act of kindness was the most challenging. The first two acts felt so much more natural, and the good feelings I felt as I started made it very easy to continue to do the nice things. On the other hand, everything about the buying of the coffee felt unnatural, and I just felt like a strange person after.

I certainly hope that the person I bought the order of enjoyed it more than I did. I like to think that is true for the first two stories as well, although that is more debatable since they made me feel really good about myself. I don't think people give me these kinds of acts of kindness, but I am also very privileged and have a lot of advantages given to me in more subtle ways. Since they aren't specific events, I have to really work to feel good about them.