<
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/well/family/random-acts-of-kindness.html>
"In late August, Erin Alexander, 57, sat in the parking lot of a Target store
in Fairfield, Calif., and wept. Her sister-in-law had recently died, and Ms.
Alexander was having a hard day.
A barista working at the Starbucks inside the Target was too. The espresso
machine had broken down and she was clearly stressed. Ms. Alexander — who’d
stopped crying and gone inside for some caffeine — smiled, ordered an iced
green tea, and told her to hang in there. After picking up her order, she
noticed a message on the cup: “Erin,” the barista had scrawled next to a heart,
“your soul is golden.”
“I’m not sure I even necessarily know what ‘your soul is golden’ means,” said
Ms. Alexander, who laughed and cried while recalling the incident.
But the warmth of that small and unexpected gesture, from a stranger who had no
inkling of what she was going through, moved her deeply.
“Of course, I was still really sad,” Ms. Alexander said. “But that little thing
made the rest of my day.”
New findings, published in the
Journal of Experimental Psychology in August,
corroborate just how powerful experiences like Ms. Alexander’s can be.
Researchers found that people who perform a random act of kindness tend to
underestimate how much the recipient will appreciate it. And they believe that
miscalculation could hold many of us back from doing nice things for others
more often."
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
