Kindness, it is a word we all know but not necessarily an action we all practice. Everyone has had moments of being unkind and quick to judge another individual. It happens, we are all human and are not perfect. However, there is an importance to being kind and I’m not talking about Karma. One should be kind not because they are expecting something in return but because they want to have a positive impact on another individual. The topic of kindness has stuck with me since I was a junior in high school and it is something that I think about frequently four years later.

During my junior year of high school my journalism advisor gave our class a speech about kindness. He used a piece of poster paper as an example of a student’s (let’s call him Jimmy) self-worth. Each time something sad happened to Jimmy my teacher would tear off a piece of the paper. For example, Jimmy wakes up in the morning knowing he has to wear the same clothes as he did yesterday, a piece of him is ripped away. Jimmy then goes to school and gets made fun of for not having clean clothes; an even bigger piece of him is ripped away. In class the teacher calls on Jimmy and he doesn’t know the answer, the teacher calls him out in front of the entire class for not doing the homework and has more of his self-worth ripped away.

At the end of the presentation, there was only a scrap of paper left. That piece of paper got thrown away because at the end of it all Jimmy may have been thinking, why even bother anymore? Of course, not everyone goes through what Jimmy went through, although some people do. The takeaway from the presentation was that you should be kind to others because you never know what someone else is going through. Someone could be going through a situation like Jimmy or someone could just be having a bad day and are beating him or herself up about it. At the end of the presentation our teacher challenged us to go out and say “hi” or at least smile at someone we did not know.

To this day I still accept my teacher’s challenge. I still accept the challenge because I know that when someone I don’t know says hi or smiles at me, I do feel a little bit warmer on the inside. It is not something that I do every day, but when the presentation crosses my mind I try my best to greet a stranger. Everyone would like to be treated with kindness. Even if they have a rough exterior.