People Share The 16 Random Acts Of Kindness From Strangers That Changed Their Lives Forever

One small act of kindness can really make an impact on one's life.

Sometimes You Need a Shoulder

“One of my best friends killed himself at the beginning of this year. For the first few weeks after it happened I was in that state of mind where you can just about manage to block it out enough to get yourself through the day, only to have it suddenly overwhelm you out of nowhere. 10 days after he died, I was on a packed commuter train out of London, squashed into a corner seat. Some little thing had set me off and before I could compose myself I started unravelling before the carefully averted eyes of my fellow commuters. I rang my Dad to try and talk it through, but couldn’t calm down. Trying desperately not to sob audibly, pressing myself into the window and willing myself to stop shaking; just thinking about my friend stepping off the ledge over and over… Then the lady sat beside me – a well dressed, middle aged lady who turned out to be Canadian-but her arm on my shoulder and said “”I couldn’t help but overhear; I just want you to know that whatever you’re going through now, I promise you it’ll be ok.”” We ended up talking about my friend the whole journey, and she chose to share with me that she lost her first husband to suicide. She talked to me about bereavement and loss, and then she made me laugh. She gave me a hug when we got to her stop, and I never saw her again. I’ll remember her for the rest of my life.” (Source)

New Yorker Values

I was 18 and had just moved to NYC by myself and was trying to adjust to the lifestyle there (having come from a small town in the south). It was my first time using the train and I had no idea how to buy a metro card. So I’m standing there at the only working machine with a line of people behind me trying to buy a card and was a little frantic because I knew people were waiting. People in the line start yelling at me to “hurry the f_ck up!” “what’re you stupid!” I start to get teary eyed which made me even more frantic. This guy steps out of the line and tells everyone to chill the f_ck out. He comes up, shows me step by step what to do and pays for a 12 ride card for me. He patted me on the back and told me, “not all New Yorkers are assh*les, but next time someone tells at you, yell back and they’ll leave you alone.” In that moment I didn’t feel so alone. Without his kindness and guidance I probably wouldn’t have stayed up there and had all the great experiences I did. (Source)

Shooting the Sh*t

I boarded a last minute flight to my hometown not knowing if my brother was going to be alive when the flight landed. I was sitting in shock thinking about how this was going to be one of the longest hour and twenty minutes of my life and it must have been written all over my face. This particular aircraft had two emergency seats then a space before the door (no window seat) giving the person who sat in the window seat behind a huge space for leg room. A guy sat down and commented how he loved to get that seat, extra leg room etc. Then he leaned forward and said, I saw your face when I was walking up the aisle and can tell you can really do with talking to someone to take your mind off something, so I’m just going to talk, at any point you want to talk about it you can, otherwise I’m just gonna chat to you. I don’t know if that guy will ever have even the tiniest bit of understanding of how deeply he touched me with his actions or his parting words. Six years later I still think about what a touching thing he did by just chatting to a stranger who looked like she was going through hell. My brother is alive and well but for the duration of that flight I had no idea if that would be the case. (Source)

Hold My Hand

Something very similar to this happened to me… I got the heart wrenching call that my 26 year old brother had passed suddenly the night before. Two days before that I had broken my right ankle badly – thus preventing me from driving the 6 hours back to my hometown. I got to the airport and when the handicap-deliveryman dropped me off at my terminal I sort of collapsed into my chair and tried my best to hold it together in public. Without a word, the elderly woman next to me just reached over and held my hand. She didn’t say anything… just held my hand. It was the nicest gesture from a stranger who knew I was about to fall apart. (Source)

Sometimes Stranger Danger Isn’t a Thing

I was traveling around Bali with my (ex)girlfriend and ended up stuck in a village after the buses and taxis all stopped in the evening (it was inland so not many tourists). We didn’t realize this and were standing next to the road looking for someone to take us back to our village. A bunch of kids noticed and in very broken English explained that we wouldn’t be able to get home until the next day. At this point my girlfriend was getting pretty upset and honestly, I was starting to get a little worried. The kids just laughed and started flagging down cars until a nice new Mercedes pulled over, they chatted for a couple of minutes with the driver, then we were unceremoniously bundled into the back. When we asked how much it going to cost he point blank refused. He said that the kids explained our predicament and he was just doing what anyone would. In a country where most the people you meet are just looking to rip off tourists, this was so sweet. He even drove us all the way home despite the resort he worked for being a good 5 kilometers before our stop. So I suppose it wasn’t just him that was kind but the dozen or so kids that saw we were in a bind and helped as well. We didn’t get to properly thank them as we could barely understand what was happening. (Source)

The Mechanical Horse

When I was about five in the mid 70’s, I was sitting on one of the mechanical horses that rock back and forth outside of a Woolworth’s (I think) and playing while I was waiting for my mom who was in the store. Some lady walked by and put a quarter in to make it go. I was over the moon. It is a moment of pure joy that I’ve remembered vividly. I still even remember what that glorious kind stranger looked like. (Source)

Car Problems

A few years back, I ran out of gas on my way home from work. I manage to get my car to median so I wasn’t totally blocking traffic. I was stuck at this point no one I could call and no money. I had 3 people stop and help me. The first guy ask whats wrong? If I was okay? If I had any money on me for gas etc. I told him my car was out of gas, had no way of getting to a gas station and showed him my check that I had yet to cash so I had no money. He left and car two shows up. Car two and I chatted for a bit but she said she couldn’t really help me out which is all good. So the 3rd person to stop is an undercover officer. Really nice guy helped me push my car towards the grass and brain stormed ideas for the situation because he didn’t want to leave me there. Well as me and the cop are talking car number 1 pulls up, gets out and hands me a a full 10 gallon gas can. I profusely thanked the guy even offered to get his number so I could pay him back. He refused just said it was really no problem. I didn’t ask this guy to spend his money on gas for me but he did anyway and I’m thankful he did. Too bad ill never get a chance to pay him back. (Source)

Take Me Out to a Ball Game

Don’t want to make this too long, but I basically bought tickets this weekend to a baseball game for my anniversary trip to a city my wife and I have never visited. Unfortunately, partially because of the way stubhub had the screen laid out, but mostly because I didn’t pay close enough attention, I accidentally bought tickets for the wrong date. I posted on that city’s subreddit hoping to find someone who both wanted tickets to that game but also might want to help out a fellow redditor. The support was mostly positive but no one wanted the tickets. All of a sudden I get a PM from a random guy telling me that he didn’t want the tickets but he could buy discounted tickets to the game I needed if I wanted an affordable way to replace my tickets. A few PM’s were exchanged and I had the tickets in my inbox. I replied asking how he wanted to be paid and he simply said that it was on him and to enjoy my time in the city. I can’t believe that a random stranger over the internet would be so generous. (Source)

Feeding the Love of Books

Told this story in another thread, but it’s definitely the nicest thing and is someone I will never forget. When I was a kid we didn’t have a lot of money, so we often shopped at the thrift store. What I loved about that was that you could get 10 books for a dollar, so I would plant myself in front of the book section and make piles of which ones I wanted to get and then decided on 10 after I’d gone through them all. One day an older lady saw me sitting with my piles and asked if I liked to read. I told her I did and showed her a few of the books I found that I liked. She smiled and then pulled a dollar out of her purse, handed it to me and said, “Promise me that you’ll keep reading.” I was so happy and immediately stood up and thanked her while nodding my head. She smiled again and walked away and I went back to my piles, now able to pick out another 10 books. This was probably about 20 years or so ago, but I still think of her whenever I buy a new book. (Source)

Feeding the Hungry

My mom loves this story. When I was 3, my little brother 1, my parents were absolutely poor. My dad was getting his ph.d., mom had two babies and tried to work as she could, student debt etc. They once spent the last bit of money they dug out of couch cushions and car floorboards to get us a little bit of rice, beans, milk etc. When we got home from church one Sunday morning our porch was filled with brown paper sacks of groceries! To this day, my parents still never found out who put them there. (Source)

Those Who Have Not Give the Most

A friend and I decided to backpack around Europe (we are from the UK) and look for work picking fruit etc to make ends meet along the way. After a month of traveling and looking unsuccessfully for work, we found ourselves in Avignon in France, living rough by the river. My friend decided he was going to try to walk/hitch back to England and I decided to try for a few more days to find work. Two days later and I had failed to find any work and had not eaten. An obviously homeless guy wanders up to me, his only obvious possession was a grill rack, like you might put in an oven. He asked (he barely spoke English) if I was hungry and of course I said yes. He put down his grill rack, leaned over the edge of the river and proceeded to pluck fish after fish out of the water with his hand and put them on the grill.
He then asked if I liked pears and what sort of cigarettes I smoked. I said yes and told him Marlboro’s. He disappeared for half an hour and came back with a load of pears and cigarette butts with a bit left on them, all Marlboro. He then setup a fire, cooked the fish and we sat and ate the feast and smoked the cigarettes he rolled from the butts. The next day I went to a local distribution point and managed to hitch back to the UK. I will never forget his gesture. (Source)

Keep on Running

I had severe anorexia in hs. I used to run every day. At 5’7, I went from 158 lbs to 90 lbs over a summer. I ran myself thin, literally, and starved myself. My meals every day were the same things: a bowl of oatmeal, Special K cereal, some grapes. Every day I ran the same route. There was an elderly man who always sat on his porch. We never spoke but would half smile or wave to each other as I ran by. He was there from the beginning and basically watched my “progress”. One day I was running in a down pour but I didn’t care. I needed to keep burning off calories. It wasn’t until about half way that I just got fed up. I couldn’t believe I was doing this to my body. To myself. I slowed down to a walk and started crying. It was raining anyway and didn’t think anyone would notice. As I walked past that mans house, he yelled out to me “It gets better every day”. I nodded. I went home and admitted myself to the hospital. It was the nicest thing he could have done because I never had any encouragement. People were always judgmental and he wasn’t being that. I wouldn’t have admitted myself that day or even that week if he had just ignored me or looked away. (Source)

The Good Samaritan

When I was 12, I was on my way back home from school. I was riding my bicycle, and at this crossing, a car in a traffic jam made space to let me through. While crossing the road, I got hit by this driver, trying to overtake the whole lane, so he wouldn’t have to wait out the traffic jam. The car hit me, scooped me up, launched me into the air, which resulted in a broken kneecap, a broken nose and a broken rib for me. The driver fled the scene, the driver who let me pass took care of me till the ambulance arrived, and made sure I stayed awake. Now that’s not where it ends. The guy who took care of me was so mad about the driver fleeing the scene, that he actually put some advertisements in a few national newspapers, describing the car, and where the car might have possibly been damaged. After 3 days, the guy turned himself in, claiming that the advertisement lead people to figure out what he did and threaten him. So a random stranger spent quite some money on getting an advertisement out so the guy who ran me over could be found. I never heard of that stranger after, but I’m pretty sure the driver wouldn’t have turned himself in if it weren’t for the ads. (Source)

Free Pass!

In London one day, a guy handed me an all-day underground/bus pass without saying a word. It was like, 9:00 AM, so I used it pretty much all day long. (Source)

The Best Things in Life Are Free

When I was laid off years ago, with my wife and two kids to feed, someone would send me either $100 cash or a grocery gift card in the mail. It came every 1-2 weeks with no return address. To this day I have no idea who was sending it. (Source)

Happy Birthday to You

I was working as a producer on a talk radio show. The show I was working on wasn’t terribly popular so we really wouldn’t get many callers. So on my birthday I’m working like any other day when some guy calls in and gets his entire family to sing me happy birthday.
He had never even called before and hasn’t since. I’ve never met him. My day was instantly awesome. (Source)