“Be kinder than nec­es­sary, for every­one you meet is fight­ing some kind of battle.”

A yel­low piece of paper was taped to the table of the host­ess stand with this say­ing writ­ten on it. I quickly read this as I waited to be seated at my table of the restaurant.

I began to think. Amongst the other con­ver­sa­tions going on I could not get this quote out of my head. I started to think about what this really meant in a deeper way and thought of how many times I, myself included, have wit­nessed oth­ers sim­ply brush off some­one else and even sim­ply ignore him or her. We as human beings are trained to be our worst enemy. We are con­stantly quick to judge oth­ers and often times stereo­type every per­son we encounter.

As we sat down and ordered our food, we over­heard a lady a cou­ple tables over mak­ing a scene and yelling at her waiter about how he had messed up her food order. Think about how many times we are con­stantly com­plain­ing or unsat­is­fied with some­thing in our lives.  

Instead of yelling at some­one or get­ting angry with some­one, think of how much of a dif­fer­ence it would make to oth­ers and our­selves if we all made it an effort to be kind. This made me real­ize we are not always as com­pas­sion­ate to oth­ers as we should be.

One of my friends asked our wait­ress why they have that sign taped to the table when you walk in. She explained how they had a cus­tomer who had been com­ing in for years on a reg­u­lar basis. Her house had recently burned down and she lost every­thing she owned. She had no clothes, no fur­ni­ture, noth­ing. She had recently lost her hus­band and the only thing she had left was pic­tures of mem­o­ries of them that she watched burn and turn into ashes. The day after her house had been com­pletely destroyed in a burn­ing fire she came into the restau­rant as always with the same smile placed on her face as usual. 

As I heard this story I had a big lump in my throat. How many times a day do we com­plain about not hav­ing the lat­est new cell phone, clothes or TV?

If you have a chance to make someone’s day bet­ter even if you maybe aren’t hav­ing the best of days, why not do it? We are all guilty of being rude in some way or another to another person.

Next time you walk down the hall, smile to some­one walk­ing by. A sim­ple lit­tle smile may make his or her day. Everyone feels bet­ters if they have some­one smil­ing at them and remind­ing them that they are special.

I am very grate­ful I saw that say­ing that day, and am con­stantly think­ing about it. It has made me change my per­cep­tion of how I look at peo­ple and real­ize how we can­not only bet­ter our­selves but every­one around us.