Recalling random acts of kindness

It was World Kindness Day this past Saturday.

So in the spirit of this wholesome day, we decided to ask people around USC about their random acts of kindness.

Day after day, it feels as if we have been fed a lot of negative news.

So, for a change, I decided to focus on the bright side and ask people about an act of kindness - one they either experienced or performed for someone else.

After all, we all need our daily dose of good feels.

For Communications student, Paul Yi, kindness lies in the everyday simple acts.

PAUL YI: I think it’s as simple as just opening the doors, to be honest, because we’re all so busy with our lives and we seem to just head to point A and point B that we kind of fail to recognize the power of humanity; and just simply as opening a door for one another, I think is a small, actionable step towards kindness.

According to Paul kindness can be contagious.

PAUL YI: More likely, it will cause a domino effect and they will do the same action or thing to another person.

Freshman Tali Duckworth says that kindness means making someone feel better after a rough day.

TALI DUCKWORTH: I’m actually planning to do this later today, but my roommate told me that her dog passed away last night and so I was just going to plan to go to Target, make her a little care package, say, like, Hey, I’m here for you, anything you need. And I think she’s going to go home this weekend. So just giving her some time to hang out with her family this weekend, too. I think I’ll be good.

USC Music student, Angelica Brooks practices kindness every now and then in her day-to-day life.

ANGELICA BROOKS: (I) paid for someone’s meal behind me in the drive-thru. I had no idea how much it was, but you know, hey, I’ll just pay for their meal. And in fact, the cashier was a little stunned. Like, Are you sure? Yes, I’m sure. Yeah.

Angelica has made it a practice to buy meals for strangers at least 3 or 4 times a year.

ANGELICA BROOKS: There’s sometimes when you’re sitting in a drive-thru and you know you’re sitting there for so long, sometimes you can see through your rearview mirror, you know, if the person behind you like has a lot of kids, or if they look very like disdained on their face, you’re like, you know what? They look like, they could use a free meal. So I just pay.

World Kindness Day is marked in many countries every November 13th. But you don’t need a day to celebrate acts of kindness. It can be any day...or every day of the year.