Two Day Magazine

The older I get and the more strangers I come in contact with, the more I appreciate what a good job my parents did when they raised me.

Kindness is something they instilled in my sister and me from a very early age.

This is not to say that I'm a perfect daughter, sister, wife, friend or employee. I'm not. I know this. But all the years of getting talked to by my parents and getting reminded of how to be a kind and decent and compassionate person was--I realize now--critically important.

My parents always taught me: One, no one has to put up with my bad attitude. Two, everyone should be treated fairly. So simple. So basic. But so, so fundamentally important.

I'm not sweet all of the time.  No one is.  Like anyone, I can whine and complain and generally carry on when I'm stressed out or pissed off. But never in my life, ever, have I treated someone as a second-class citizen.  It makes me realize that bullying never really stops.  Adults don't grow out of it.  They just become cagier at it.

I see customers treating employees in the service industry like crap. And, it honestly makes me want to give the employees a hug when it's my turn in line. I want to take their hand after someone just mistreated him or her and say "I'm nice. Take your time." And it makes me want to say to the mean customer "Does your mother know how you treat people? What would she think?"

We're all people, people. We're people with feelings and bad situations and unimaginable things going on and some poor souls have hard lives that the rest of us can't even imagine.

So. Just be nice. Be kind. Smile.

Someone who is having a bad day might think of that smile from the nice person in line at their coffee counter and forget about the stressful, negative encounter he or she had to face perhaps earlier that day.

A smile isn't going to change someone's life, but it might help them get through their day.  And taking things one moment or one breath at a time is sometimes all we can do a little more often.

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