The Ripple of Kindness
A long time ago in a high school far away, there was a GIRL. She wasn’t just any girl. Popular, talented, beautiful, always smiling, she was the GIRL that everyone wanted to be or be around. Top of the heap in high school status, the echelon gravitated to her while the outsiders dreamed of an opportunity to bask in her glow.
And I, I was so far removed from even the outsider status, I couldn’t imagine to even be a thought on her horizon. I was slightly older than most my peers, returning to school after having a baby at what was too young an age. I knew nothing of high school secrets and status, as I awkwardly roamed the halls from class to class. My concerns were for paying rent and child care and getting an education, not which designer made the best denim, or how to style myself to look like the icon of the day, or boyfriends, or parties.
While my concerns may have been different, it did not make me immune to the whispers of cruelty that can be the high school experience. Shunned by most, sympathized by others, with few that reached out in genuine friendship, I had never felt more by myself in a group of people than I did at that point in my life.
Until THAT day when walking down the stairs to change classes and the GIRL, with her boyfriend’s arm draped casually across her shoulders, turned to me with a smile of warmth and sunshine that I can still see in my mind as vividly today as then, reached out with words of kindness, in knowing who I was, and took the time to bring me up to the level that made me part of the whole. I don’t remember the conversation anymore — just how the GIRL made me feel. The three minutes when everything else fell behind me and I was touched by the immediate feeling of pure belonging. And no, it wasn’t a permanent fix to the lonely girl in the school, nor was it an invitation to the “in” crowd; it was her being her kind self — and the ripple effect it had.
Many years have passed since that moment in the hallway. The GIRL left school shortly after to make her own way in the world. I continued and eventually found a niche as I made mine. At times our lives have briefly intersected. A moment on a bus, at a concert, in a store, where we sometimes remember each other and our previous life. Her life, the trials and tribulations, far more public than mine, echo through the many years with a constant and continued thread of resilience; something we both share, though different paths taken. The warmth and genuineness of her kindness is still imparted to the world around her, something I have encapsulated because that feeling has never left me and by being kind, can create a ripple that far outreaches the moment in time.
I think of the GIRL from time to time and wonder if she ever realized the impact she had or if she would laugh off her legacy, knowing her life was not always perfect, nor was she always perfectly kind. We never know how far reaching the ripples of our actions will go; it makes more sense to act in the good when we consider this. I continue to keep an open heart, regardless of the pain that it may bring at times and hope that by doing so, someday someone may write about a time when their lives were touched by a kindness that impacted them to feel and to become more.
