I was sharing on Instagram in response to a question “what makes you hopeful?”, asked by the amazing City as Living Laboratory - an organization with an aim to make sustainability tangible through creative collaboration and public engagement. Seeing random act of kindness shown among people and the change of seasons always make me feel hopeful. (I’d encourage you to give this question some thoughts too, the exercise itself will make you feel more hopeful.)

I experienced a random act of kindness first-hand just yesterday and wanted to record it here. For some reason, there are not a lot of these incidences or perhaps I was not looking hard enough. It happened in the subway (good things do happen there!), I ran down the stairs as I heard the train coming, swiped my metro card perfectly (you know how one might need to swipe a million times to get through the turnstiles), only to realize it was packed like sardine. Within seconds I spotted a tiny space in one of the carriages where two tall men were trying to get into, I squashed in one second before the door closed. The two men left outside both gave me a thumbs-up and a passenger standing next to me said “good job” with a big smile on his face.

I was so happy I made it not because of my advantageous small size (especially for these situations), but because of these small random encounters of kindness shown by total strangers - they were truly happy for me, just because I got on.

As I ride through the city, I felt genuinely happy and hopeful for the two-second connection I made with three total strangers.