Kindness, Jacked Up
Hoping to visit all 58 National Parks before I die, or more urgently, before they’re turned into oil refineries, I’m at Zion and Bryce in Utah with my eleven-year-old son Theo. On our first night, the thermostat didn’t work and the toilet overflowed. This morning I ran over a nail. Theo suspected I was well on my way to a Tourette-like bout of swearing - mindful me - when much to his disappointment, a series of kind acts by strangers spared him.
By the time we returned from breakfast, the bathroom was spotless and the furnace was pumping out heat. Just outside the Zion National Park entrance, Theo discovered the flat, having spotted the “low tire” warning message on my dashboard. I hopped out to check, and it was easy to detect the protruding screw and resulting hiss of the deflating tire. The driver behind us saw this and suggested that if I hurried I could make it to the little service station just a few hundred feet back.
The plural wives inside weren’t able to do much, but Jean Martin, a lovely French-Canadian stranger waiting for a shuttle bus offered to put on my spare. My Jewish American Princess was showing, and I gratefully accepted his help. Jean Martin wouldn’t take my cash, simply asked that I pay it forward, so we spent the day hiking instead of searching for an auto shop in the wilderness.
When we returned to the ranch, I asked the greeter Jolene if she could help me locate a tire repair place between here and Bryce Canyon, tomorrow’s destination. Jason, the on-site handyman, overheard me. Before we could head down to dinner, he had returned, my tire was fixed and back on the Volvo. Jason took my tip – hey, this guy works here – he’s gotta make a living.
Kindness, the occasional twenty-spot handed over with gratitude, and good deeds done expecting nothing in return. It can be easy to forget that more often than not, humans lead with generosity and compassion. Kindness begets kindness, contagious as laughter. Like the muscles used between smiling versus frowning, it takes more effort to be cruel than to be kind. Kindness alters experience and changes the world locally and globally. Perhaps, far away from daily chaos, people in a National Park are more attuned to nature. The sense of harmony effects human behavior and people are more gentle with each other. Amidst the beauty of breathtaking canyons that leave me speechless, kindness prevails.