If you only have three minutes, click and listen to this from NPR’s Story Corp. A Victim Treats His Mugger Right. You’ll never forget it.
I’ve been thinking about strangers – the hundreds of people I pass, walk alongside of, and share roads and air and space in my world with every day. I don’t know them, but I do know that no encounter has to be for not. Each of them has the capacity to impact my life. And, reciprocally, I have the capacity to impact theirs.
When have you been touched by the kindness of strangers? Even their smiles? Tonight, I thought of two strangers whose small, unsolicited nudges of kindess influenced my walking. One was on a treadmill, another on roller skates. A third stranger’s kindness was not so small – this man was Julio Diaz, a man being mugged on New York subway.
Treadmill. I noticed the wiry kid two treadmills over while I was on mile 2.7 of my own stationary run not too long ago. (You can only make eye contact with yourself in the mirrors for so many miles before notice the neighbors.) He was positively loping along – chin up, smile on, singing at the top of his lungs. It looked effortless, beautiful – happy. And, the next thing that I knew I was smiling and trying hard not to stare. I kicked up my treadmill to a speed that put space and spring into my own stride. I kicked up the ipod to a song that carried me. His spring had gotten into my step; I think I might have been close to loping. (I tried not to be obvious – but I was grinning everytime I accidently caught the loper’s eyes or took a look at his banana yellow running shoes.)
Before I left the gym, I scrawled a note on the back of a discarded workout-schedule, walked to his treadmill and slapped it on the deck. “Thanks for running happy.” Thanks to all of you who run happy – whatever form that takes. I mean it.
Unlike the stranger on the treadmill, the stranger on roller skates noticed me. This was a young kid, roller-skating fast-food out to cars at the local Sonic. He had seen tears rolling down my cheeks each time he rolled out the door to bring an order to another car. Well after he had delivered my drink, he returned and knocked on my window. I rolled the window down, and he simply said something like, “ You look like you need a brighter day, lady. No more crying. This might help.” He handed me two cardboard tokens for free drinks, and skated away. I’ve never used those tokens. It just seemed right to keep them in a box as a token of a stranger who noticed and warmed my day and view of the world.
A ball at the crest of a hill can roll down that hill in any of a million different paths. All it takes is a small nudge to change it’s course and perhaps its destination. I believe that our kindness to other strangers, our noticing, and the hope we carry in ourselves as we run along can provide powerful and needed nudges to others who we may never know, but certainly share our walkings with.
I want to leave you with a link – perhaps you listened to it and then read on. This is a story about Julio Diaz – a stranger who showed kindness at an ultimate level; his story will impact you, but imagine his impact on his mugger. If you didn’t hear this little story at the top of the post, click here.
Wherever you are in your walking, you are in the right place to make a difference. So run happy, notice tears, and become the stranger whose kindness mattered.