Needed Yesterday

When we were young, many of us were taught that becoming an adult meant accepting responsibility. Part of that responsibility is recognizing that sometimes we are called to help carry those who cannot carry themselves.

That doesn’t always mean taking on someone else’s burden as our own. More often, it means using whatever skill, knowledge, or strength we have to lighten the load for a while. The important thing is that we do it thoughtfully, without resentment for what we may need to give up in the process.

Compassion asks something deeper of us. It asks us to live without regret over the kindness we offer, because compassion is already within us. It is part of the nature within us.

No act of kindness is ever wasted. We never truly know when a small moment might become something meaningful in another person’s life. More than that, we often do not even recognize what kindness looks like in the moment.

That reminds me of a night when I owned my restaurant.

It was late, and I was cleaning up at the end of the evening. Rain was coming down hard outside. When I stepped out the back door to empty the trash, I found a man sleeping beside the dumpster under the small awning that covered it, using it as shelter from the storm.

I had to step over him to reach the bin. As I did, he stirred, as if he expected to be told to move along.

Instead, I said, “It’s okay, my friend. You can stay here.”

I emptied the trash and went back inside.

A few days later, after the weather had cleared, he came into the restaurant to thank me. It wasn’t a small thank-you. I won’t go too deeply into it, but his gratitude stayed with me because what I had done felt so ordinary. I had simply allowed him to stay dry for the night—something I assumed anyone would do.

But that’s the thing about kindness.

It does not always look spectacular. It is rarely the grand gesture we imagine. More often, it is simply paying attention to the people already in front of us.

We never know when something small—something that costs us almost nothing—might help carry someone through a moment they could not have carried alone.

That is why it is never too soon to begin being kind, and never too late to start.

We just have to hope we do not wait until someone needed it yesterday.

Albert Alarcon Jr. Author of The Nature Within Us: A Journey Through Love, Reason, and What Makes Us Human