Parenting

Here's A Beautiful Reminder That Random Acts Of Kindness Are Contagious

by Sarah Hosseini
Updated: 
Originally Published: 

Proud mom makes post about her adult daughter’s random act of kindness: ‘This is the America I choose’

We could all use a “put-a-little-love-in-your-heart” moment right now and this will do it. A woman who recently lost her job due to budget cuts basically gave the shirt off of her back to help a fellow human in need. That’s right, in her time of need, she helped someone else. The woman’s mother posted the whole heart-warming story about her daughter’s random act of kindness on Facebook to spread the love. And wow, did it spread.

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Ede Ericson of New Mexico posted a photo of her daughter, 25-year old Karly, on Facebook this week. She started off by saying, “This is the America I choose.”

“From day one, Karly has been the kind of human that has never met a stranger. She is Native American and Anglo. She has deep brown/black eyes and dark brown hair (well most of the time – she is 25, it gets colored quite often),” Ericson wrote. “But, there is something about her that is approachable, attractive and friendly.”

The mom explained that her daughter Karly learned her new position was getting nixed because a grant didn’t come through and budget cuts had to be made. “She was devastated,” Ericson wrote. But alas, her daughter had to eat so she went grocery shopping. Bare in mind, when you lose your job (and you’re not a millionaire) you’re not going to the grocery store with reckless abandon, you’re going with a list planned down to the penny.

Ericson explained that as her daughter approached the store there was a gentlemen outside who was cold, hungry, and asking for food. Karly asked the man if he’d like her to buy him something to eat. “She didn’t say anything to him about the fact that she had carefully planned out her shopping list so that she could get everything she needed with the cash she had just withdrawn from the Credit Union. Instead, she asked him what he would like to eat.”

The man asked for a rotisserie chicken since it was already cooked and it was cold outside. “When she came back out, she gave him the food. She also went over to her car and got out a coat and gave it to him,” Ericson writes. Hold up. SHE GAVE HIM HER COAT. Which is basically the same as giving a person the shirt off your back. Wow, we love her.

Karly went back into the store to do her shopping. “She carefully went through the store checking off each item on her list and adding everything up so she did not go over the total dollar amount she had in cash,” Karly’s mom writes. When Karly got up to the checkout line and was getting her cash a gentlemen told her he was going to pay for her groceries. “She was completely caught off guard,” Karly’s mom said.

The man said that he saw Karly being kind and generous to the gentlemen outside of the store and wanted to pay it forward by buying her groceries.

And this is all it takes to make the world a kinder place.

It doesn’t matter what color you are, what religion you believe in or don’t believe in, what political party you align yourself with, your sexual or gender orientation, or in Karly’s case as her mother points out – what color your hair is at the moment – none of that matters when it comes down to kindness. Seeing other people as human and worthy of help is what real kindness comes down to. It’s probably the only thing that’s going to save us and the world.

Karly’s mom echoes this sentiment beautifully at the end of her viral post.

“This is the America I choose.

Where we craft lives of service toward each other with simple acts of grace and dignity. A meal and a warm coat. An acknowledgment of a kindness.

In the rumble of our differences there are all manner of similarities, all manner of commonalities.

All we have to do is show up and pay attention.

We only lose if we give up.

This is the America I choose, not red or blue but a rainbow of possibility.”

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