Last week, after a horrendously difficult day, I went to the ATM to deposit my check and there was a handwritten note on the keyboard that said, “Please don’t use this machine, the keyboard doesn’t work and I couldn’t get my card back.“ Now, this seems like such a simple thing, but if you have ever lost your ATM card you know it takes like two weeks to get a replacement and it becomes very hard to manage money, so the note was such a great gift that it made my whole day. Someone who had just lost their ATM card and I am sure was really pissed off took the time out to write a note so that no one else would have the same problem. The more I thought about it the more I realized that there are random acts of kindness all around us and you never know what nice thing you will do will impact someone else’s life.

My best friend Marcellas is in the Big Brother house on CBS, and a couple of weeks ago won a pass to stay off the dreaded slop that some house guests are forced to eat. Marcellas is not the kind of person to want to give up meals and be forced to eat protein oatmeal for a week; however, another house guest, George, has been forced to eat the slop for his entire stay so Marcellas gave him his pass. Yeah, it’s not a big deal and seems like something so insignificant, but to George it really meant something that someone else was willing to give up his comfort to help him out. During a game where people lie, backstab, and conspire to get ahead, it was very nice to see that my friend could give out this random act of kindness.

Donald Trump, weirdo that he is (and what the hell is up with that hair, man, GO TO JOHNATHON SALON), once had his car break down on the side of the road and a man and his wife stopped to help him. It’s Donald Trump so I am sure they thought it was interesting to be helping out one of the richest men in the world. But after the ordeal he bought the family a new house just for stopping to help him. Now, I’m not saying that things like that happen all the time, but you never know what kind of impact you can make on someone’s life.

I once saw a magazine show that had a regular five-minute segment about a person they had picked randomly from a phone book. It was cool to see that everyone has an interesting story no matter who they are or where they were from. This particular story was about a young boy who was in a kindergarten program for special-needs, autistic, and retarded children. The extraordinary thing about this boy was that he had no special needs and was going to start first grade with normal children when he was old enough, and yet his mother sent him to this special school. The teachers said it was a great advantage to have a normally developing child in that environment because it would help the learning-disabled children to see, emulate, and learn to coexist and not feel intimidated by children who were more advanced than they were. All the children got along and seemed to have so much fun together and the boy of course treated the children just like he would any of his friends. The parents of the boy were middle class, normal people and didn’t need to send their child to the special school, but it was such a great gift to the other children to be able to interact with a regular kid. The best part was that the mother had not sent her child to the school so that the the other children could learn from him but so that he could learn from them. He would grow up and continue to develop with a tolerance and compassion for those who were less fortunate. He would grow up without fear of people who were different.

Watching this random act of kindness showed me that doing something nice for other people could have an impact not only on them, but on you as well. So the next time you see someone who needs help with their groceries, or when someone another driver needs to be let into a lane, or someone is hungry and you are able to give them some food, do it. Call it karma or being a Good Samaritan or whatever, but somewhere, somehow, someway, the acts you put out will come back to you and strengthen your life. BLOG HARD!

It’s always a business doing pleasure with you!

– Dylan Vox