21 Random Acts of Kindness and our hearts have changed!

Gratitude, Random Acts of Kindness  //  

If you follow along our adventures on Instagram (Liz_and_Ryan) then you know we had a lot of fun completing our 21 Random Acts of Kindness last Wednesday. We joined over 500!!! people doing sweet things on July 17th in AMAZING honor of the 21 beautiful people from Montoursville, PA and all of the others who lost their lives on TWA Flight 800. Leading up to Wednesday, we had a list of things we wanted to do in hopes to make that day extra special for people we crossed paths with! We woke up that morning with an extra big smile on our faces knowing the impact we might be able to have! My mom even said this in a blog comment (thanks for reading mom! ;) ) and we couldn’t agree more, “If you wake up with the plan to do 21 acts of kindness the tone for the entire day is positive!”

It is AMAZING how incredible the day can be just by starting it off knowing your goal for the day is to go out of your way to do something special in hopes to make the day brighter for someone else… now multiply that by 21 and the day is pretty much magical! ;) At one point on Wednesday, I was literally skipping down the street with a huge smile on my face. I told Ryan I felt like a little fairy with a wand that was sprinkling joy all over!!! It was so much fun! And actually a really big challenge too.

The challenging part was a little bit disheartening to us… or maybe the better description of it would be eye-opening! There were a few things we did throughout the day with so much excitement… and then we watched from afar to observe how people would act on the receiving end… and for some… they just didn’t act. For some, the reaction was surprise and wow… for others, they were too busy to even notice. We created a hop scotch down the street to encourage people to take time to have fun. We watched about 20 people walk right by the hop scotch and never skip a beat. It was as if they didn’t even see it. They didn’t even take note to the message that said “have fun today.” That was kind of crazy to us… but totally eye-opening! The reality of our busy lives is that we often walk right by acts of kindness that are right in front of us and never take a moment to even recognize it or appreciate it. For those that walked right by the reminder to have fun, they didn’t even take a moment to let the smile appear on their faces!

Ryan and I sat outside on our stoop for about 30 minutes. We were about 18 random acts of kindness in and we were observing people walk right over one of them. We sat in silence and I think our minds were just working in our hearts. We knew this was a lesson for ourselves… a lesson that sometimes we just have to slow down and take it all in. And a lesson that we have a really big responsibility to help spread kindness and happiness around… because honestly, I think we could all use a little more of it in our lives! (Both giving and receiving!)

We got up from our stoop and I decided to go clear some clutter from our closet and give some of our clothing to those who need it more! On the way down to the donation box, I saw a McDonald’s Big Mac Box littered in the middle of the road. I slammed on my breaks and literally stopped the car in the middle of the road. Ryan looked at me like I was crazy and said, “what in the world are you doing?!” Once he saw the trash that I picked up, he knew exactly what I was doing. Saving the Bay, obviously! ;) It was like a no brainer at that point.

21 Random Acts of Kindness in and our hearts have definitely changed! Those beautiful friends, family and neighbors who lost their lives on July 17th, 1996 have touched the lives of so many people. Here on earth or watching down on us as beautiful angels from above, they are making this world a better place! We are so grateful for their hearts and the life lessons they are teaching us along the way!