Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as apt to stew inside of my own judgmental juices as the next girl which doubles the reason someone like me should take every opportunity to be kind just “because”.  When I was fighting depression (before meds, counseling, 12-step programs and all kinds of help) being kind was the last thing on my mind. Most of the time I either wanted to slap you or hide from you.  Now, it’s just as easy to be kind to someone as to be flippant, irritable, or dismissive.

This afternoon I took my car in to get the oil changed in a place I’ve never been to and when the young guy came to get all the particulars about my car it was pretty obvious that he was “in training”.  But I was kind to him.  I told him that yes, my car has 169,000 miles on it and yes, I get my oil changed every 3,000 miles but I also told him that the “take my car to the dealer” light was on but I was sure my car was okay so for him not to get all excited that I was going to spend a whole lot of money with them.   We laughed.

Then when his “manager” called me to the PC so he could load my information, we got to chit chatting back and forth about the kind of car I have and that he also had a car like mine awhile back (until it got totaled) and he loved it.  I told him I loved my car too even if it is 13 years old…it can still go from 0 to 60 pretty durn quick!   I’m not sure why, but when I went to pay my bill it went from $44 to $34.  I got some kind of a discount without even asking!  I wasn’t being kind to get something from them, I was being kind, “just because”.

Ended up feeling doubly rewarded as a result of being kind.  A.) Made some friends and I’ll probably go back there even though their shop is across town from where I live and B.) I got a nice discount.

Sometimes it really does pay just to be kind.