A Life Lesson About Kindness

by Rebecca J. Hnilica

     “I need your help this morning,” my mother said to me early one Saturday when I was 13 years old. As my mother hardly ever asked for help, I knew that to argue for another hour of sleep would have been pointless. As I was getting up, she said, “Be in the car as soon as you can. You do not need to shower.” Before I had a chance to ask where we were heading, we pulled into our local McDonald’s. This morning was off to a very odd start. My mother did not often ask for help, and under no circumstances did she eat at McDonald’s. After she placed an order for a large collection of breakfast foods and handed the bag over for me to hold, I asked her what exactly we were doing. Her reply still makes me laugh. She looked at me rather sternly, I thought at the time, and said, “We are going to the dump.” Okay, we were going to the city landfill with a bag full of foods we did not eat, very early on a Saturday morning, to help my mom. As if this made any sense!

     We pulled into the dump, and she took the bag of food and walked up to the young man who was working the dump site alone. I listened as she said to him, “Here is a nice breakfast for you. I hope that this will make your day a little better, so that when the next person asks you for instructions, you will be a little more kind and pleasant, a lot more helpful, and that maybe you can return a smile.” I stood there speechless. Many years passed before the impact and significance of my mother’s actions fully set in, but even then, at 13, I knew I had just witnessed a kindness that could change the world.

     The values modeled that day by my mother are the very essence of social work - thoughtfulness, kindness, compassion, and change. My mom wasn’t being kind because she was returning the sentiment. She was hoping for change. Social workers are a kind and compassionate breed. We have lofty goals of correcting the world’s most fundamental injustices and oppressive systems. We want to initiate large-scale change and watch the positive outcomes unfold. We work for all people - our ideas are big, our goals are bigger, and our hearts are wide open. Yet, in our daily routines, during the busiest parts of our days, we often forget the most basic tenet of social work - that the most simple and easiest acts of compassion and kindness create change. We get busy with errands, and we get busy trying to change the world, and in doing both, we simply forget. We forget to be kind always. We forget to be helpful. And we forget to smile.

     So, I ask, remember the impact of simple kindness, and make it a priority. Let’s change the world one smile at a time!

Rebecca J. Hnilica is a graduate student at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, working toward her MSSW. She enjoys working with children and their support systems and currently interns with the Knoxville public schools.