The ripple effect

"Last night I was sitting on a bench with my pack...in the rain...feeling like the only person left on the planet with no where to go and an old guy comes up to me with a guitar. 'Whose your favorite band?'  I said 'the Beatles'. And he sat there playing all my favorite tunes and singing at the top of his lungs and suddenly I wasn't alone and it wasn't raining. And then he walked off like he hadn't done a thing. Kindness man. Kindness."

The quote below was a status update I saw on Facebook. I loved it so much I tucked it away and saved it in a draft here. It was just so perfect. What I really love about it is how it so perfectly captures the effects we have on people that we never get to see. The man with the guitar will never know how much his act gave me a good feeling about life and people. He'll never know it brightened my day and made my smile, thousands of miles away from where it happened. And he'll never know I shared it here. Which also means I'll never know exactly who it reaches or what it does from here. You might read this and feel just a little better, and take that better feeling and smile at someone who needs it right in that moment. And that person might silently think, "Thank you," and pass on their gratitude... So before you read the quote let me just ask you to think about how powerful that makes each of us. By the ripple effect, we all impact the world far beyond what we generally allow ourselves to believe.