The Yes Woman: What could go wrong when I show kindness to strangers?

An unexpected act of generosity is rare. In a city, you could traverse the streets all day and never receive so much as a smile from another person. Apathy toward other pedestrians is our default setting.

Today is the last day of Electric Ireland’s Powering Kindness Week. Donations to date have raised more than €200,000, but it isn’t just about money. The initiative encourages acts of basic human decency, and reminds us to be kind to one another, which is something worth being reminded of.

We live in a strange age, where everyone has a platform to express opinions on everything. The more unacquainted with our subject matter we are, generally the more aggressive the opinion gets. I won’t bore you with my inexpert views on animal husbandry or the correct way to make sushi. But it’s good to be reminded that we don’t need to spend every moment fighting our own corner; we can venture out into other people’s and consider things from their perspective.

Prone to pugnacity

This week, I’ve shelved the pugnacity that I can be prone to and taken some time to notice how total strangers appear to be doing. Walking around Dublin is a source of great solace, but I generally use the time to retreat inside myself and ignore the people around me. When I take a moment to look for other people’s distress or loneliness, however, it becomes much harder to ignore.

After helping an elderly lady to get her shopping on to the bus, we get talking. She tells me that her husband died six months ago, after 40 years together. Considering what that must feel like as she gazes at me through sprightly eyes gives me a sense of the chasm between her experience and mine. Such a loss is not lessened by the fact that her husband was elderly. Since I can offer her nothing, I listen instead, and as we part ways, she says, “It’s nice to talk to someone about him”.

A failed attempt

Not all attempts at basic human decency go so smoothly, however. Nice things about other people often occur to me on the street or in a shop – that their perfume is lovely, or that I like what they’re wearing – but I never tell them. On the rare occasion that I receive a spontaneous compliment, it feels very positive. Why not give that to someone else? It takes no effort and might make someone’s day a little nicer.

So I make an effort to say nice things to people. Whenever something positive occurs to me about a stranger and the context doesn’t feel creepy, I express it. After admiring many a lipstick and perfume, and telling friends when I think they look particularly nice, I find myself browsing in a book shop. On noticing a dapper fellow of about 20 perusing the shelves beside me, I say, “I like your jacket; it’s very nice”, only for the young girl behind him to turn to me with a flick of her hair and say, “Eh, he’s taken, thank you very much”, before whisking him away by the arm as he looks at me with eyes as wide as a spooked horse.

Generally, however, my attempts at kindness don’t backfire. The cases where it is met with suspicion are even more proof that we desperately need to try to be nicer to one another to dispel that kind of insecurity.

Smiling at people generally prompts them to smile back. Buying a cup of coffee for one of Ireland’s many homeless people doesn’t help their overall situation, but it seems to make people we usually force into invisibility feel more visible. Even something as small as holding a door open for someone rather than focusing on rocketing yourself through it first requires placing emphasis on someone else.

These are all tiny gestures of kindness, but a mere smile may pull someone who feels cut off from the world back into it. That has to be worth the risk of a few unsolicited dud phone numbers and threatened partners.