A Stranger's Kindness

Even a stranger's kindness to another stranger may be a blessing.

A rather shabby-looking man came to the restaurant today. His reddish hair was unkempt, long past his shoulders, and touched with gray. His faded blue eyes were numb and expressionless, he looked like he hadn't shaved in several days, and his shoulders were stooped. He wore a coat, even in the seventy-degree weather, and carried two heavy-looking bags. It appeared that they carried everything he owned.
After placing his order, he sat at one of the tables and sorted through his bags, pulling out empty styrofoam cups, paper, and other trash. He put the trash in the big garbage can at the side of the patio, went back to his table and neatly arranged his bags, then sat gazing into space until his food was ready.
There were only two other people there eating, two women together, neither of them rich-looking, but well-groomed and generally respectable in appearance. As they got up to leave, one stopped to speak to the man. I stiffened, watching defensively. With her fashionable hairstyle and big sunglasses, she looked like the judgmental type. Was she going to fuss at him? Ask him to leave? I had no idea who this guy was, but it both hurt and angered me to think of how some people criticize poor or homeless people, just because they're poor.
But the woman only talked to him for a few minutes, motioning, and he nodded and answered. The woman rejoined her friend and they left, and he continued with his meal.
After a little while, another woman, about middle-aged, with graying hair but dressed and carrying herself well, got out of her car where she'd gone to eat. She walked across the patio (giving the man a small glance as she passed his table) to put her burger wrapper and bag in the garbage can. But when she turned and started to pass him again going back, she paused and leaned towards him on the table. I saw her slip a folded bill into his hand before saying something with a kind smile and then going back to her car. She had obviously noticed him and been planning to do that.
He took it and said something without changing his expression, then went on eating after she'd left. Maybe he was used to people feeling sorry for him. Maybe he just thought that woman was another do-gooder trying to do her act of kindess for the day. And maybe that's the way it was. But maybe not. There was no one else out on the patio to see her good deed, and I was behind a reflective window, so even if she'd have looked, she wouldn't have seen me watching.
But whether that lady's kindess intended to make herself look or feel good, or whether it came from a genuine heart of compassion and pure motives, and whether it blessed that man or not, it sure blessed me.

Someone is always watching. What you do, how you act, where you go, what you say. And sometimes the people you think you are affecting are not the ones you actually are. Every life, and how it is lived, has an impact on others.