10 Moments That Prove Quiet Kindness Is Noticed Even When No One Seems to Be Watching

Why to encourage someone who clearly plays badly? It’s not kindness

Cheryl Cadwell

BECAUSE ENCOURAGEMENT GIVES A FEELING OF ACCOMPLISHMENT AND WORTH. IF NO ONE GAVE IT, NO ONE ELSE WOULD EVER BE ABLE TO FUNCTION IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY. OR WOULD YOU PREFER THAT CHILDREN GET PUT DOWN UNTIL THEY QUIT TRYING? KINDNESS ISN'T ALWAYS ABOUT BEING "NICE".

Cheryl Cadwell

By encouraging someone who clearly has no talent you doing them a disservice
That poor kid should drop cooking playing and choose a different career
That’s not kindness

Cheryl Cadwell

HAVE YOU EVER READ ANY OF THE STORIES HERE, WHERE A CHILD WAS DISCOURAGED, OR TOLD THEY WERE "NO GOOD" AT SOMETHING, ONLY TO RECIEVE A KIND WORD AND PRAISE, WHO THEN WENT ON TO GREAT HEIGHTS IN THAT FIELD OF ENDEAVOR? BEING "HONEST" BECAUSE YOU DON'T SEE THE POTENTIAL IN SOMEONE, IS NOT KIND EITHER. SOME PEOPLE ARE SLOW STARTERS. BEING GOOD OR BAD AT SOMETHING ISN'T ALWAYS THE POINT. GIVING A CHILD A SINGLE KIND WORD, IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN DASHING THEIR DREAMS.

Andie

Three years of enduring bad violin and one compliment?? the bar for being a good neighbor is apparently very low and very achievable.

My dad was not a warm man. When I was 40 he started leaving voicemails just to say he’d called. No information, no request. Just “It’s Dad, calling to say hello, call back when you can.” I didn’t understand it for a year.
Then my sister told me he’d read something about people feeling unseen and he’d been trying to correct it. He never mentioned it directly. He’s been doing it every week for three years.
I call back every time now. We still don’t have long conversations. But I pick up faster than I used to.

Bright Side

I grew up in a house where no one said sorry. When I had kids, I made a decision to say it clearly, specifically, when I was wrong. My daughter is fifteen now.
Last week she apologized to me for something minor, unprompted, with real specificity. I recognized exactly where she learned that. I went to the kitchen and stood there for a minute. Some things take a decade to come back.

Bright Side

Andie

She spent a decade modeling apology and her fifteen-year-old gave it back unprompted, most adults never manage either half of that.

I run a small bakery. There’s a woman who comes in every Friday, orders the same thing, sits alone for about forty minutes, then leaves. She’s been doing it for two years. I don’t know anything about her life.
One day she didn’t come and I realized I’d been looking up at the door. She came the following Friday. I’d saved her usual table. She noticed. Didn’t say anything about it, just paused before she paid.
I don’t know why it felt significant. It just did.

Bright Side

My college roommate failed his second year and had to go home. I packed with him. Carried boxes down four flights. Drove three hours. We didn’t talk much in the car.
When I got back my other friends asked where I’d been. I said helping someone move. They didn’t ask follow up questions.
He called me two years later when he re-enrolled at a different school. Said I was the only person who’d treated it like a normal day. I hadn’t thought of it as anything other than the obvious thing to do. Apparently that’s rarer than it should be.

Bright Side

Andie

Apparently "the obvious thing to do" is now remarkable enough to remember for years.

I used to sit with my grandfather every Sunday. He had trouble following conversations near the end, repeated himself, and sometimes lost the thread mid-sentence. I never redirected him. I just let him finish.
My aunt told me once that I was the only visitor who didn’t look at my phone. I didn’t think of it as doing something. I just thought he deserved someone’s full attention for one hour a week.
He died thinking he was easy to talk to. I’m glad about that.

Bright Side

Omg so you didn’t check your phone and treated this like an extraordinary achievement??

My grandmother grew up without much. When I was a kid she’d push food onto my plate without asking and take things off her own. I didn’t understand it then.
After she died, I found her grocery receipts in a drawer — she’d been buying things for the family two doors down for years. No one knew. Her neighbor told me at the funeral. Said she’d just started leaving bags on the step and never mentioned it again when they tried to thank her.
I keep one of her grocery lists. I look at it sometimes.

Bright Side

Some people are just built differently ❤️

My sister moved back home after her marriage ended. She expected me to have opinions about it. I didn’t offer any. I helped her move her boxes, stacked them in the spare room, ordered food. We watched television for about four hours.
She said later that it was the best night she’d had in months. I had opinions. I just decided they weren’t what she needed. I’m still not sure I was right about her marriage. But I was right about that night.

Bright Side

My birth mother gave me up because she was too young. For 34 years.
When I found her, she was shaking before I even sat down. She slid a document across the table. Then a photo of me I had never seen. My chest stopped moving.
She had never been too young. She had been in a situation where her family refused to support, and signing was the only option anyone gave her.
She didn’t hand me over. She was walked out of the room. The document was the original form. She’d held onto it because it had my footprint on the back.
I didn’t know what to say. Neither did she. We ordered coffee and sat there for two hours not saying much. That felt like enough for now.

Bright Side

The system failed her completely and she still showed up with grace.

I’m a landlord with four units. One tenant fell behind for two months during a rough patch — a job change, overlap in bills. She asked for two weeks. I said, “Take a month and pay the rest when you’re through with it.” My accountant told me I was running a charity. Maybe.
She’s been in that apartment for six years and has never been late before or since. Last winter when the boiler broke she was the one who called the repair company, waited for them, and let them in while I was away. I notice these things.

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