It struck me the other morning, as I chatted with the friendly barista making my latte, how much of our lives we spend in interactions with strangers.
They鈥檙e small and relatively inconsequential encounters much of the time. That everyday how鈥檚-your-day-going, got-big-plans-for-the-weekend chatter doesn鈥檛 matter much in the grander scheme of things.
Except it does.
Because all those interactions we have with strangers? Those are the moments that give us a tangible sense of our connection to other human beings.
Sometimes it takes just one kind stranger to remind us that we鈥檙e part of a community.
Like the pair who stopped to help push a stranded car to the gas station on Fraser Highway. The couple who picked up a stranger鈥檚 dropped wallet at the mall and made sure they got it back. The folks who offered assistance when a local resident fell in the parking lot at South 性视界传媒 Recreation Centre. The kind soul who stopped to give a local couple a ride home from White Rock鈥檚 Concerts at the Pier after one of them fell. (Thanks, Dave.)
Those incidents came to my attention in recent days because the person on the receiving end of the kindness took the time to write to the editor about it.
To that list I can add my own memories of stranger interactions that have stuck with me long after the moment passed.
The man, years ago, who gave my then-preschool daughter his breakfast sandwich because she was sad. The woman who stopped on a wintry day to help me and my belongings down a set of icy steps. The older woman who watched me navigating a toddler meltdown in public and told me I was doing a good job. The kid who gave me an out-of-the-blue compliment about my purple puffy jacket and made me smile on a grumpy day.
None of those were grand gestures. It鈥檚 entirely probable that each of those people has forgotten the moment that our paths crossed. But in each case, a simple kindness changed the trajectory of my day.
I hope that I鈥檝e left a trail of simple kindnesses in my own wake and that somewhere, some stranger remembers the time that I changed their day for the better.
When I start to lose faith in the world, that鈥檚 how I try to find it again.
I can鈥檛 do much about American politics or Canadian politics or, for that matter, British Columbian politics. I can鈥檛 fix the health-care crisis or make the schools less crowded. I can鈥檛 stop wildfires or climate change or hate or war or crime.
But a smile and a hello, a random compliment, a hand with heavy bags, an eye on a rambunctious toddler while Mom deals with baby sibling 鈥� these are things I can do.
These are things we can all do.
Will we change the course of human history? Perhaps, in a butterfly-effect sort of way, because you never know when one tiny action may set in motion a far-reaching chain of events.
More immediately, though, we may just change the course of someone else鈥檚 day.
And we may just help turn strangers into neighbours, one act of kindness at a time.
Julie MacLellan is the 性视界传媒-White Rock bureau chief for Black Press Media.
