Sometimes a random act of kindness can impact your life in unexpected ways.
It was a busy Monday morning at San Francisco airport. I had the uneasy feeling that it was going to be a difficult flight back home to Rochester. My son had not slept well the previous night, my iPad was running dangerously low on battery, and to top it off, we were assigned a middle seat on the flight. The perfect trifecta of flight-ruiners.
I walked into our aircraft, sending a silent prayer to the powers that be for at least one of the seats in my three-seater row to be unoccupied. Unfortunately, it was not to be. As I approached my seat, I was welcomed by the weary glances of my co-passengers in the window and aisle seats. They were clearly not excited at the prospect of this chubby woman and her chubby lap-child taking up what was left of their armrests and foot space. I understood their displeasure – it was not exactly my dream flying scenario either.
As I put my son down to place my bag in the overhead bin, I heard a voice, “Ma’am, would you like to take my seat?”
I turned around to see a man, maybe in his mid-forties, looking directly at me. He had stood up from his seat – an AISLE seat – and was motioning me to take his vacated spot. “There’s no passenger in the middle seat, so you can have some extra space for your son too.”
It took me a second to process what he was saying. Here was a gentleman, dressed in a business suit and holding an open laptop in a plane. I have traveled on enough flights in my life to know that this was not the archetype for being kind to parents traveling with children during Monday morning rush hour. And yet, there he was, willingly giving up his aisle seat and extra space to squeeze between two people in a middle seat so that a stranger could travel more comfortably. It was bewildering, to say the least.
I was so surprised by this selfless act, that all I could say was “Oh my – thank you! That’s so kind of you.” He waved off my thanks and proceeded to move to my seat, earning him winning smiles from the passengers in that seat-row. I walked over to his seat, placed my son down on the extra seat that I received as a bonus, and sat down. Maybe it was going to be a good flight after all.
This man’s kindness affected me in two ways – one temporary, the other more long-lasting.
The temporary effect lasted a full day. I was so overcome by the overall niceness of this interaction that it gave me a much needed jolt of energy and positivity throughout the flight. I’m sure my upbeat demeanor had an impact on my son as well; against all odds, he was a perfectly-behaved baby on the flight. I even had a nice chat with my co-passenger for a while, something that almost never happens when I’m flying with my son. Turns out it is true what they say about the ripple effect of good deeds.
The long-lasting effect was quite unexpected, but it’s caused a powerful change in my mindset. You see, ever since I became a parent, I’d been constantly hearing accounts from friends (and social media) telling me how parents are judged by perfect strangers for the smallest of things, how society is collectively annoyed by everything about kids, and how difficult it is to JUST GET BY with a kid in general without inviting some kind of backlash. I would occasionally hear some weak defense to this prevailing viewpoint, often along the lines of “But not everyone is like that…” but it didn’t carry much conviction. The hostility was everywhere, in excruciating detail. A generic, abstract defense didn’t do much to inspire confidence.
But this experience did. Here was an example of someone being nice to a parent for absolutely no reason other than basic human decency. I now had a specific story, better yet, a specific story that happened to ME. And because this incident happened early on in my life as a parent, I was able to convince myself that this was a common enough occurrence, rather than an astounding exception to the status quo.
Now my default viewpoint of the world is that everyone loves kids, and everyone is appreciative of one’s efforts as parents. Laugh if you must, but it’s a much more empowering world view than the alternative. Every time someone shows me a thumbs-up sign as I’m trying to wrestle my toddler into his car-seat, every time someone says “Your son is adorable!” or every time someone helps me pick up the toys my son dropped on the street – this belief is strengthened. And on the odd occasion that I encounter some unpleasantness – like the lady who rolled her eyes at me and my son as we sat down next to her at the train station – I try to attribute that to the person having a challenging day rather than the world as a whole being hostile to parents and kids. An exception to the rule, if you will.
I’ve truly enjoyed the extra jollies that this mindset has afforded me. Starting from a point of hope and a belief in the inherent goodness of people has done so much to improve my confidence as a new mother. Parenting is a roller-coaster journey of emotions, and I’ll take every bit of help to make it smoother.
