By Ryan ReehThe Daily Northwestern
Guilty as charged, your honor. Guilty of a random act of kindness.
In the wake of sorority rush week, I thought of kindness instead of the new pledge class. Sororities get a bad rap for their recruitment process, sometimes for being insincere when talking to prospective sisters. The reputation is not deserved: the sisters do try to get a feel for how the recruits may fit into their respective house. You can’t really blame the women – it is hard to get to know someone in a relatively brief amount of time. They were just trying to be kind.
The reason I thought of kindness, however, is not because of the sorority sisters. Just recently, I have found the sincere brand of kindness hard to find. Particularly from people who are busy, often citing they don’t have enough time to be nice to everybody. But is that really the case?
Many years ago, a Social Studies teacher of mine assigned aRandom Act of Kindness to each student. The challenge was to do something kind for someone without expecting any reward in return and without being asked to every week. The thought was that these simple acts would make the world a better place. Basically, the real-life version of the movie “Pay It Forward.”
Of course, every week, there were the students who walked their dog without their parents asking them, or the kids who gave up their allowances to their siblings. These were kind acts. But every once in a while, somebody did something extraordinarily kind out of the blue. One student spent every red cent of his Bar Mitzvah money on giving presents to everybody he knew (regardless of how well he knew them). It was the kind of kindness you heard about in folklore, but never really saw.
Last Tuesday, I had a very busy day. Loaded with homework piled 20 stories high, classes, and a meeting I was not looking forward to, I thought I had every excuse to be selfish that day. But I managed to squeeze in one kind act.
Natural Ties, a group dedicated to bringing NU students and disabled members from the community, had a meeting that I attended. The group, according to Medill sophomore and Co-President Jason Plautz, has 35 members, 7 of which are students. I didn’t feel obligated to go: I just felt the need for random kindness in my life. It was probably the best 2 hours I’ve spent here at NU. Not only did I get to know some new people in a short amount of time, but it took the edge off of a really busy day. Imagine that.
I challenge you to try commit a random act of kindness, especially if you are too busy to consider others in your life. It doesn’t have to be anything on the scale of saving the world, but it should be something nice for the sake of being nice. You may not feel it right away, but the world around you may suddenly become a better place.
And if you are ever charged with the heinous act of committing a random act of kindness, you should plead guilty on all counts. Maybe you’ll get lucky and the judge will give you a lifetime sentence.
Reach Ryan Reeh at [email protected].
