Anonymous asked:
Are real people as kind as you characters? I mean, it's not just yours, other fictional people are like that too, but what do YOU say? Are you guys actually like that on the inside?
shanastoryteller answered:
today i got a coffee on my lunch break and a man had his daughter on his hip and two coffees in his hands and he held the door open for me anyway
i went to go pick up a skirt that was being held for me and the employee said to me “uhg, i’m so tired, the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet” and i said “your hair is so beautiful” because it was long and red and shiny and had blown out curls and she perked up and said “thanks! it’s to distract from the fact that i didn’t put on makeup this morning”
i was driving home and i realized i was in the wrong lane and i needed to move over and a car slowed down so i could merge in front of them
that was just today
whether or not you think people are kind is a sort of confirmation bias, i think
if you go through life expecting people to be terrible, that’s what you’ll remember, that’s what you’ll focus on
but if you go through life looking for kindness, that’s what you’ll find
overtip your waiters. let the car go in ahead of you. smile at the homeless person and give them your spare change. compliment people.
you yourself are likely never more than one rushed morning away from a bad mood, one missed paycheck away from suffering, one accident away from ruin
you are probably not a politician or a ceo or a god. you cannot remake the world in your own image
but you can make other people’s lives easier and softer in small, effortless ways that cost you nothing. you can be the silver lining not just for your friends and family but for hundreds of thousands of strangers you haven’t even met yet. life is nothing but one opportunity after another to both show and be shown kindness
life can be cruel. people can be terrible.
but the simplest way to increase the number of kind people in the world is to be one
okay
look
i’ve seen some variation of the above response to this post of mine and here’s the thing -
you need water to live
sometimes it rains. sometimes water floods your streets and cleans your car and fills your well and you drink freely and easily and it’s a wonder to you that anyone could ever be thirsty at all
but deserts exist
you need to drink even in a desert
but water doesn’t fall from the sky. dirt sticks to your feet when you walk in the street and you can’t see out your front windshield thanks to the layer of filth and the well has run dry
you still need water to live. the lack of available water doesn’t make it less necessary for your survival
so what do you do?
do you lay down and die?
or do you get digging?
do you dig your cracked fingernails into the hot dry earth and scrape it away, layer by laborious layer? your hands may cramp and your fingertips will bleed and you’ll become just as filthy as your car windshield and the dirty street. your back aches and your thighs have gone numb and your tongue is swollen in your mouth as a fine layer of dust coats your lungs
but if you keep digging, eventually earth will give way to water
the ground gives it up grudgingly, barely enough to fill your stomach, but it’s water all the same
my mother’s boyfriend used to hit me on top of just being an asshole
he taught me how to know the perfect time to flip a pancake and after the first snow of the year when i was seven he built a snowman with me that was just as tall as i was.
we lived in an old hunting lodge when i was young because that’s what my grandmother could afford. it was not meant for people to live in year round. we got several feet of snow every year and it was often below freezing and all we had to heat the house was a small gas stove that couldn’t even keep the living room warm. i would stand in front of it until the back of my legs were red and hot to the touch and i was still cold
my grandmother would put an old camping pot on top, fill it with water, and throw orange and lemons peels in it so the smell would spread throughout the house even if the heat wouldn’t.
i had to bike six miles uphill on a highway both ways in all weather in order to get to my high school job at mcdonald’s where i made $7.25 an hour, money i would need when i had to completely financially support myself after graduating high school. my aunt and uncle declined to drive me even if they were able and refused to teach me how to drive. once i biked there in the middle of a rain storm, freezing and miserable and mad about how unfair it all was
my manager locked my bike in the storage closet and at the end of the day drove me home herself. she arranged for a coworker to pick me up for my shift the next morning.
at my shitty bakery job after college that i’d only been at about a month, i learned that a coworker’s birthday was tomorrow and he had to work a full shift and didn’t have plans to celebrate and had worked every day for the past week and you could just see how it was wearing him thin
so i casually asked him what his favorite desert was and when he said apple pie i went out after work and bought all the ingredients to make if from scratch and i spent three hours making an apple pie. i didn’t have the right tool to peel the apples and ended up cutting myself, so my roommates did that part for me. i shaped the extra dough into the shape of a quill and put it on top because he wanted to be a writer
i gave it to him at the start our shift the next day and his reaction was enough to make me smile for the rest of the day.
you need water to live
it doesn’t matter if it’s rain filling your well or if you have to get on your knees and dig. it doesn’t matter if you have to cup the water in your dusty hands and lift it to your parched mouth, it doesn’t matter if iron coats your tongue because your hands are bleeding and you have to drink it all down, it doesn’t matter that one is easy and abundant and the other is hard and hurts
what matters is this:
it’s going to save your life
