It's in the Little Things
By Anna Tsuchimoto | She/Her/Hers | Tri-State Denver Buddhist Temple
September 13, 2021
Every night before dinner, I watch the news with my family. Lately, the news has seemed to be a lot of doom and destruction, like, everywhere. From the Delta variant quickly spreading around the world and taking us from “precedent times” back to “unprecedented times,” to Taliban takeovers in Afghanistan, to fires and smoke spreading across the Western US, positive news is really difficult to come by.
To combat this, I wanted to remind myself of the positivity in the world. So, over the last week, I kept a log of random acts of kindness I saw other people do or acts of kindness I did for myself. I wanted to remind myself of the joy around me, the compassion that people display, and to not feel so down in the dumps after watching the news. Here are some that I saw:
This past weekend I moved into my sorority house, and my roommate got to our house before me. She and her parents unloaded my things so that when I got there, all I had to do was organize everything!
Stopping on the sidewalk to say hi to friends after a long day of Zoom calls.
Drivers smiling and waving at pedestrians (this is especially hard to come by in large cities, like where I live.
FaceTiming with my baby sister and she told me that she loved and missed me.
A person I work with bought me frozen yogurt after a meeting.
I am giving a speech for an event at my school, and my peers worked to make my
speech better and gave compliments on my writing.
Being invited to dinner with a group of new friends I don’t spend much time with!
Hearing “good morning!” and “goodnight!” in the halls of my house.
My sorority advisors got pizza and bundt cakes for the whole house for dinner and dessert!
Someone introduced themselves to me because they saw I was sitting alone and gave me a hug.
Seeing all of these small acts of kindness reminded me of the lessons I learned in Dharma school when I was younger. A main theme in many of these lessons was “filling up other people’s buckets” with acts of kindness - whether this was giving a compliment to a classmate, helping a sibling with their homework, or even smiling to a neighbor on your walk to school, it would all help fill someone’s bucket up, as well as your own by doing something kind. Even now, I find parallels with many other Buddhist teachings. For example, the Shin Buddhist Life Principles states:
“Revering the Light of the Buddha,
Reflecting upon my imperfect self,
I will strive to live a life of gratitude.”
In my endeavors to live a life of gratitude, I wanted to gather all of these little acts of kindness to remind myself to be grateful for all of the love I have in my life. It isn’t always the big things that make life so meaningful. It’s in the little things that I find true compassion and generosity of all those around me, and I invite you all to take a moment with me to just reflect on what random acts of kindness you have witnessed recently. No matter how big or small, these acts of kindness have value, and maybe the thought of them will help make the world just a little less scary.
