Don't Pick Up All the Dog Hairs by Ronald Dwinnells

Author:Ronald Dwinnells
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626348707
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Food for thought

Always nip problems in the bud! Think of a time when you kept letting small problems go, but it kept getting larger until it was out of control.

CHAPTER 20

DON’T BE STINGY WITH KINDNESS

“Kindness? It may strike us as absurd to even approach the subject: Our world is full of violence, war, terrorism, devastation. And yet life goes on precisely because we are kind to one another.”

— Piero Ferrucci

Iwas about to pull the Mastercard out of my wallet when the waitress, clearing the table, said with a smile, “Your dinner has been taken care of, and you owe nothing.”

I was momentarily stunned. My daughter Abbey and I had just spent two days on top of Mt. Baker, in Washington State, and had made our way to Burlington—a small town about an hour’s drive from the base of the mountain. There, we stopped at Bob’s Burgers and Pub for our traditional post-climb dinner. Spread across our table were big, fat, juicy burgers, an ice-cold beer for me, a tall bottle of Coca-Cola for Abbey, steak fries, and two decadent desserts. It was a nice respite for our dirty, tired, and hungry bodies. Lugging around 40–50-pound backpacks on rocky and icy paths while treading in cramponed mountain boots is certainly no easy task and can burn thousands of calories in a single day. We used it as a great excuse to pig out and eat delicious, heart-attack-risk food.

As I looked at the large amount of food we had ordered, my mind raced, trying to determine who paid for the dinner. My wife? Friends? Perhaps our mountain guide. I wondered who I knew in Burlington, Washington. No one! But even if I did, no one knew we were here at Bob’s.

So I asked, “Who paid for our dinners?”

The waitress hesitated, as if to protect the benefactor.

Although I had made it my own tradition some time ago to occasionally pay for strangers’ meals, I had never been on the receiving end of this act of kindness until now. I was suddenly in high spirits. Someone would really do this for me? How kind! With so much negativity around us these days, my belief in the goodness of humankind was instantly restored.

The waitress wouldn’t tell me his name but said that a gentleman who’d sat directly behind us wanted to pay for our dinners, since we seemed to be very nice people.

Wow, how powerful is that? It is kindness in the purest sense, where there are no ulterior motives, no boasting, and nothing expected in return. A man used his personal resources to pay for two strangers’ meals. Maybe he felt sorry for us because of our ragged appearance. Or maybe it just made him feel good to be kind.

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