Stories to restore your faith in humanity
Some examples from me and some from you :)
Hi! This is Leyla from A Day Well Spent, a newsletter about purposeful living.
What subscribers received recently:
Seeking out the seismic life shift — and is this a 10 year cycle?
2 years on Substack: what I’ve learnt
You can subscribe with your email to ensure you never miss my posts:
About this image: I took a quick photo of this book at the onsite bookshop at Groundswell last week — a regenerative agriculture festival all about soil — as a note to self to purchase it at a later date.
I also interviewed the author, Rob Hopkins, at the festival, for an upcoming episode of BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme (delightful man).
I haven’t yet read this book but after speaking to him, I’m pretty certain I will love it. And this photo — and the title and premise of Rob’s book — felt like a fitting main image for today’s piece.
A curious but lovely thing happened this week
On Sunday, I recalled something that had taken place late the night before on the London Underground. I thought it might be a nice little feelgood anecdote to share on Substack Notes and that it could perhaps raise a few spirits.
Quite unexpectedly, by the next evening it has received over 13,000 likes, been reshared over 600 times and received over 300 heartfelt comments — I’m trying to make sure I read them all.
(you can tap on the Note below to read the full story of what happened on the tube platform)
This reaction has taken me by surprise because there is nothing particularly remarkable about what I did.
All the beautiful responses have been quite unanticipated and I feel a little bit like I don’t deserve all this good energy sent my way (but will happily and gratefully receive)! It's the direct inverse of trolling, people’s words have been making me well up!
So many people in the world do so much more. And there are so many times I haven’t acted, when I probably could have.
When it comes down to it, I really just handed a puking man a napkin that happened to end up meaning way more. Had he simply been drunk — as I had wrongfully assumed — I wouldn’t have bothered mentioning the incident to anyone.
But resonated with this story people have, and I think it’s for a number of reasons
Some have said it was deeply touching because of the example of the raw and uncontrollable nature of human grief.
Others have recalled being in a similar situation to that man on the platform and a person showing them compassion during a time of great distress. Some have mentioned incidents when no one stopped to help them. More have talked about how we can never truly know what someone else is going through.
But the vast majority of the comments under that Note have been about kindness and how even the smallest, seemingly insignificant act of it can have a disproportionally large impact on others and the world at large (a bit like the Note itself, I suppose).
I’ve written before about paying it forward and The Butterfly Effect:
Like a pebble dropping into a pond, our small acts of kindness can ripple outwards and positively effect more people and circumstances than we could ever imagine. And we will likely never even be aware of it.
Isn’t this how we solve most of the world’s problems?
I am moved beyond measure by how much the tube platform story has touched so many others. And I wonder how far the ripples from the words I tapped out without much thought might reach (it’s been clicked on over 90,000 times so far).
But mostly, I really hope that guy is doing OK
In an age of unprecedented, mounting and daily despair from world events, I am wondering if maybe we are all just feeling a bit starved of examples of quiet humanity?
Maybe that’s why people have resonated so much with this little story, and other stories of the same ilk.
It feels like all aspects of ourselves — our minds, bodies and spirits — are craving these glimmers of light and hope, like a food group essential to our nourishment and wellbeing to which we’ve had limited access to, for what feels like a very long time.
It’s so easy to feel drained and depleted when the balance is tipped towards mostly consuming negative stimuli. There is then a risk of ‘the bad’ becoming the only thing we see in the world and in others.
When in reality, there is so. much. good. out there.
Would you like to share a story that restored your faith in humanity?
If we are feeling deficient in stories of empathy and tenderness towards our fellow man, I thought it might be a nice thing for people to share their own stories for others to read.
Because I know between us, we will have loads. Think of it as crowdsourcing kindness.
The comments section to my posts are usually behind a paywall (to protect my very generous and honest community) but I’d like to open them up to everyone today, so all can read or contribute to them and perhaps feel a bit better about the world in doing so.
So, if you — have a story / you witnessed something / you were on the receiving end of something / you have a top tip — that restored your faith in humanity, it would be a lovely thing if you felt like sharing it in a comment below:
I cannot wait to swallow these whole!!
I have three more of my own
1.
My husband recalled this story to me a couple of days ago.
Whilst he was on the London Underground (it seems like this is the place to be for random acts of kindness!), a homeless man was standing at the end of the train carriage, begging for money and food. The man had no shoes on his feet.
While everyone else ignored him, one particular passenger reached into her bag, pulled out a pair of shoes and handed them to the man.
I was amazed by this and asked my husband, ‘What kind of shoes, like flip-flops she just happened to have in her bag?’ He said they looked like fully pristine, brand new white trainers / sneakers.
Bloody well done that woman, I thought.
2.
If you are on Instagram, @goodnews_movement is a really heart warming account that will drip feed the goodness of mankind into your daily consciousness.
3.
And then there’s @jimmydarts whose motto is ‘kindness is candy’. His feed is LIFE. I’ve been gobbling up his videos in recent times.
He goes around asking people for help for made up situations like, ‘I’m a dollar short for this baby food, could you spare a few bucks?’ When the person responds to this stranger with kindness, boy are the tables turned!
When you think all hope is lost, Jimmy’s good work, the generosity of his followers and the kindness of the people he meets, will revive you.
I won’t reveal what happens in Jimmy’s videos but what I will say is, do give them a watch and EXPECT HAPPY TEARS 💗
I always try to remember:
people are fundamentally good
everyone was an innocent child once
all anyone really wants is to be loved and not feel alone
Don’t forget to share your story of something that restored your faith in humanity, if you’d like to:
If you appreciate this piece, please let me know by tapping the ❤️ at the top or bottom, sharing it or by forwarding it on — thank you.
More on A Day Well Spent
| Opinion | The List | You Can Do This | Interviews | Sunday Reflections |
17 years ago, I was in my last trimester of pregnancy, on my way home on a packed jubilee line carriage. I asked a seated man if he minded moving his bags a smidge so I could stand without falling over (wasn’t asking for a seat). He looked at me like I was a piece of chewing gum on his shoe and said ‘it’s not my fault you’re pregnant…’ and looked away. Suddenly a bloke further down the carriage yelled at the man to “f***ing give the pregnant lady the seat!!” What followed was a blur as different people from both sides of the carriage got up to allow me to sit! For a moment I felt a sense of communal protection that day by the random stranger who didn’t know me but felt he should speak up. Forever grateful.
Also… it might not be an act of kindness per se but I cannot abide by the myth that Londoners are an unfriendly bunch.. so I go out of my way to say hello to people when I’m out and about, and I even compliment people if I think it’s appropriate to do so. My thinking is that that person can’t then go home and say no one smiles at you or is nice to you in London, because I broke that cycle if only for a moment!
1992, Manhattan.
I was a rep in the interior design business, and had to pick up carpet samples at FedEx on Times Square before getting downtown to the North Tower of the World Trade Center, 86th Floor (!) for a meeting with the architect of the Newark International Airport International Terminal, for which I was writing the carpet order. I had a big bag, my purse and the samples when I loaded myself into a taxi.
Half way to the WTC, I realized my purse was missing. This was before cell phones. I managed to get through the meeting, rushed downstairs, went to the pay phone area and dialed my home number voice mail (with the change from the bottom of my big sample bag - thank God I'm not very organized) on the miniscule chance that someone had found my purse and wanted to return it. My business cards were in there, and those had my phone number on them.
Someone had called.
It was the head minister of a homeless shelter on Times Square. He said my purse had been found on the corner of 42nd and Broadway, that I could come by anytime to collect it.
I rushed back to mid-town. The minister greeted me at the door, and asked me some precursory questions about the contents of my purse before sitting me down.
"Now listen, the person who found your purse lives here. He's homeless. He's been off of drugs for about 8 weeks and is really trying to turn his life around."
I asked if I could meet him.
He came down to the main lobby, a slight looking very polite man, and shook my hand warmly. He said, "All I could think was about how scared you must have been when you realized your purse was gone. I've lost everything out there; I know how scary and lonely it makes a person feel." I took the wallet out of my purse - all the money was still in there - and gave him the money. "No, please, it's ok. I don't want..."
I was bawling my eyes out by now. I pleaded with him to take the money. He took a twenty. He said that was enough. We embraced warmly and I wished him every good thing the world could hold.
I wish I could have kept in touch with him. I think of him so often. An angel on the streets of Times Square.