Vigilante Kindness

Something happened today while I was at the supermarket.  That thing we have all witnessed at least once in our lives.  The man in front of me in line came up short on his groceries and he had to put some things back.  I watched, somewhat stunned, as the people around me in line shuffled nervously, unsure how to handle his embarrassment   Wasn't the solution to this problem as obvious to them as it was to me?  He was looking at making up a less than five dollar deficit. When I came up next in line, I asked the cashier to put those items on my ticket and slid them down to the gentleman to put in his bags.  The cashier seemed stunned.  "Are you sure?", she asked. Was I sure? What was there to be sure about?  I wasn't donating blood or a kidney.  I wasn't signing over my life to the military or making the decision to have a second child.  I had simply added $4.87 to my grocery bill.  Of course I was sure.

Her question really had got me to thinking and I did not stop thinking as I loaded my groceries into my car or as I drove home and unloaded them.  I have been thinking all afternoon.  Am I sure?  Am I sure I'm doing everything, every day to improve the world around me that I so vehemently pronounce to anyone willing to listen needs improving?  Not really, I'm not sure at all.  So what can I do to make myself more sure.  More sure that I'm doing, well, more? Vigilante Kindness.

Everyone loves a superhero.  A masked crusader sweeping through the darkly lit, crime-laden streets bringing justice to an injust world.  With a swift kick and a stiff-BAM!POW!-right hook a vigilante hero can bring peace to the chaos, right the wrongs and maybe steal a kiss while at it.  Why not be that masked crusader every day, only without the kicking and Ka-Powing?  Injustice isn't just a snatched purse or crooks roughing up granny in the alley.  Injustice can be having to make five dollar decisions in the grocery line..  Is it within your power to right that kind of  wrong?  Well do it! Don't do it loudly, be a Vigilante of Kindness.  Look around you everywhere, every day and ask yourself if you see something you can fix.  Then do it.  Ask people "How are you?" and mean it! And when they say, "Not so good." Ask what you can do to help.

 Don't be a Vigilante of Kindness because you think it's "What Jesus Would Do".  Don't do it to secure yourself a mansion in some celestial afterlife or a better skin in the next one.  Do it because it's right.  Because every person on the planet is your neighbor and we owe it to each other.  And if you need a really good reason do it for her.  Because she deserves a to grow up in a world where superheros exist.