For any of you who either know me personally, or have heard or read me, you would probably know that I don’t have a lot of faith in humanity. For those of you that don’t know me, let me give you a little insight. Humanity is f***ing up big time. We live in a world where a great majority no longer give a s**t about fellow man or the planet we live on.

The 1% rule the world. They are predominantly greedy, elitist, power hungry bastards who’s only concern is to acquire more money or influence. At the other end of society, things get worse. More and more people struggle to make ends meet on a daily basis. All the while, us people in the middle get closer and closer to the bottom and further away from the top. At the same time we are mostly happy to close our eyes to the terrible state of affairs in both Africa and Asia. Yeah its safe to say my faith in humanity is currently at an all time low.,

Along side the obvious sad state of our societal infrastructure is our blatant misuse of the planet we are fortunate enough to live on. We continue do drain the earth of its resources in the name of profit. And when the “so called” leader of civilised humanity, the United States, pulls out of the Paris accord, which was originally put in place to protect the environment and secure our future, you know that things are well and truly f***ed.

However, occasionally small things happen in life that remind you that it is not all doom and gloom. And there is in fact some hope for the future. It’s usually a small gesture or act of kindness, in essence not a game changer, but a signal that there is still good in this world. And perhaps more importantly a reminder to all how important it is that we don’t give up.

To me this gesture happened late last week at the post office. Picking up a parcel, which I had moved from one post office to another, I was told on site that there was a charge for this. Now just to state this up front, I had checked with the postal service a couple of days earlier to be sure, and at that time they told me there was no charge. Typical really. And not the end of the world, only for the fact that I turned up at the post office without any money on me.

After sharing my somewhat direct point of view with the poor lady behind the counter, I decided to head to the car in the hope that I had some loose change stashed somewhere. Upon my exit a lovely young lady, a stranger, offered to pay the €2 charge for me. She said it was a good way for her to “pay it forward”, and she offered it happily with a smile. For someone as pessimistic and dark as myself, it was a slap in the face reminder that good people still do live in the world. And they are not as far away as you think. In fact after scrounging the car and finding the money needed, on the way back into the post office another lovely old man offered to help me as well.

I’ll be honest with you, these two offerings of kindness totally made my day. It was the kind of selfless act, that can turn a dark moment light. And in turn, as stated above can act as a reminder to us all.

So what is the morale of this short story? Well it’s pretty simple really. There maybe certain things that are beyond our control. And the world may seem in a right old state. But at grass root levels, on the street where it is just human on human, we still have the possibility, no actually the responsibility, to make an effort for things to be better. Because, quite frankly, these acts of kindness really did act as a reminder that I too can make an even stronger effort to be kind to fellow man. Final question, have you done your good deed for the day? If not, get out there and do it. And try and do one good deed everyday.

While it has become difficult in today’s society to remember to be decent, if we all remind ourselves, and others from time to time, the importance of a good deed, maybe, just maybe, one day the world WON’T IMPLODE.

Now go forth and do good.