10 Short Stories About Kindness That Will Restore Your Faith in People

A young mother stood at the checkout counter. Her cart was full. Her toddler was crying. She swiped her card. It said declined. She tried again. Declined.

Her face turned red. She started pulling things out of the cart. The diapers. The bread. The milk. The line behind her got longer.

An older man stepped up. He didn't say much. He just tapped his card on the reader and said, "You're good. Take your groceries home."

She tried to thank him. He shook his head. "I had a hard year once," he said. "Someone helped me. Now I help you. When you can, you help someone too."

A man walked along the beach early one morning. The tide had gone out and left thousands of starfish on the sand. The sun was rising. They were going to dry up and die.

He saw a young boy ahead of him. The boy was picking up the starfish one by one and throwing them back into the sea.

The man said, "There are miles of beach and thousands of starfish. You can't possibly make a difference."

The boy picked up another starfish. He threw it gently into the waves. He looked at the man and said, "It made a difference to that one."

Sarah's grandmother knitted slowly. Her hands were stiff. But she kept knitting.

On Sarah's eighteenth birthday, her grandmother handed her a red cardigan. "I made this for you," she said. "Check the pocket."

Inside the pocket were two tickets. Backstreet Boys. The concert Sarah had cried over when she was eight years old because the family couldn't afford to go.

Her grandmother had remembered. For ten years. She had saved a little bit each month. "I told you we would go," the old woman said, smiling. "Now we go."

A man sat in a coffee shop. He looked tired. He sat alone. He stared into his cup like he was looking for an answer that wasn't there.

A woman at the next table watched him for a moment. She didn't say anything. She didn't make it weird. She just wrote on a napkin and slid it to him on her way out.

The napkin said: "I don't know you. But I hope your day gets better. Whatever it is, you're going to be okay."

He sat there with the napkin in his hand for a long time. Then he folded it carefully and put it in his wallet. Years later, he still had it.

The train was packed. Every seat was taken. People stood in the aisle, holding the bars, swaying with each turn.

A woman in scrubs leaned against the wall. She had circles under her eyes. Her hair was falling out of her ponytail. She had been on her feet for sixteen hours straight.

A teenager near the door stood up. "Ma'am," he said. "Please take my seat."

She tried to wave him off. He insisted. She sat down. She closed her eyes. And then she did something she didn't expect. She started to cry. "Thank you," she said. "I was about to faint. You saved me."

He went to the library to print his resume. He had been out of work for nine months. He was running out of options. He typed it up on the library computer and hit print.

The librarian called him over. He thought he was in trouble for hogging the printer. She had his resume in her hand. "I noticed some things," she said. "Would you like some help?"

She sat with him for an hour. She fixed the spacing. She rewrote his job summaries. She told him to add a line about volunteering. He didn't think it mattered.

He got a call the next day. He had the job. He walked back to the library that weekend with flowers. The librarian smiled and shrugged. "It's my job to help people find what they need."

An old man came into the bakery every Friday. He always wanted the last chocolate cake. Every Friday it was gone.

One day a young woman walked in and grabbed the last chocolate cake. The old man came in a minute later, saw the empty case, and turned to leave with a sad smile.

The young woman saw him. She knew. She handed him the cake. "Please," she said. "You take it."

He cried. She didn't know why. The baker leaned across the counter and told her quietly. "Every Friday is the day his wife passed. They used to share that cake. It's their day."

From then on, the baker saved one. Every Friday.

Her flight had been canceled. The next one wasn't for ten hours. Her phone was dying. She couldn't reach her family. She couldn't book a hotel. She started to cry, right there at the gate.

An older woman in the next seat reached into her bag. "Honey, do you want to use my hotspot?" She turned it on without waiting for an answer. "You go ahead. Call who you need to call."

The young woman called her mom. She booked a hotel. She booked a new flight. She breathed.

The older woman patted her arm. "We've all been stranded before. You just do this for someone else one day, alright?"

She was eight. She sat on the corner with a small wooden box. She offered to polish shoes for a few coins. Most people walked past her.

An old man stopped. He didn't get his shoes polished. He sat down on the curb next to her instead. "Why are you out here?" he asked.

"My little brother starts school next week," she said. "He needs a uniform. We don't have one."

The old man looked at her for a long moment. Then he stood up and held out his hand. "Come with me," he said. "We're getting your brother a uniform. And we're getting you one too, so you can go back to school."

A young mother sat in the park on a bench. Her toddler was finally asleep in the stroller. She closed her eyes for one minute. Just one minute.

She woke up an hour later. She had fallen asleep on the bench. Her baby was still asleep. The stroller was rocking gently.

Another mother sat on the bench beside her. She had been quietly rocking the stroller the whole time so the baby wouldn't wake up. "You looked so tired," she whispered. "I have one her age. I get it."

The young mother tried to thank her. She started to cry instead. She had not slept more than three hours at a time in eight months.