Let's All Be a Little Kinder to Each Other

The little boy with the wagon in front of the ice cream truck couldn't have been older than 8 or 9. He placed his order and then with a $10 bill still in his hand, he turned around and looked at me.

"What does he want?" the boy said. I was confused for a second. I thought he was talking to someone behind me. He asked again and pointed to my 2-year-old son Finn who was standing next to me.

I said, "A push pop," and as the boy began to order one from the ice cream man, I said, "Are you sure?" He looked back over his shoulder with a smile and said, "Yes." When he handed the frozen treat to my son, Finn's eyes lit up and I stood there in shock for a second. This little boy, without any prodding from an adult, performed an incredible act of spontaneous kindness.

This happened last week and it has gotten me thinking a lot, mainly about how much better this world would be if we were all a little bit more like that little boy with a heart of gold. If we made a conscious effort to be a little bit kinder, to take a little more interest in how someone else is doing, to realize that a simple act of kindness has the power to save a life.

September is National Suicide Prevention Month. It's also the month my mother killed herself in the basement of my childhood home in 2008. Last year, I wrote about my mom and my own battle with depression following her death.

I said it last year and I'll say it again: Depression does not discriminate. It doesn't care if you have $5 million or $500 to your name. It doesn't care if you are 15 or 85 years old. Depression can affect anyone and it's not something to be ashamed of. It does not make you weak. It's a serious medical condition, but it is treatable. Cognitive therapy and/or medication helped me and it can help many others.

But we all have the power to help each other along on this ride called life with just a kind word or gesture. And don't just assume that because someone seems happy on the outside that it means they can't use a few kind-hearted acts directed their way.

If you had asked me a decade ago who the happiest person was in my college class at the University of Richmond, I would have answered in a second: Mike Clements. I lived with him for a year after college and man, he had a laugh that reverberated across a room. But depression got its claws in Mike and he took his own life in 2012.

People who are depressed can often do an incredible job at covering it up and at work or out in public, they seem as content as can be.

And that's what makes random acts of kindness so important. Suicide rates rose by a startling 25.4 percent in the U.S. from 1996 to 2016.

"A lot of folks who are feeling suicidal, what we heard is, they’ll go out in the world with sort of a plan in mind, but they’ve made a contract with themselves that says, ‘If one person makes eye contact with me, if one person notices me today, I won’t take my life today,’” Heidi Bjurstrom, a program manager with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told KATU News. “So we know that sometimes just those simple kindnesses of just acknowledging somebody really can make a life-or-death difference.”

Now, if you do suspect someone may be considering harming themselves, forget a random act of kindness. As them directly if they are thinking about suicide and then be there for them.

Informational Resources

• Know the Warning Signs and Risk of Suicide
• Preventing Suicide as a Family Member or Caregiver

I told myself I would end this column in a way that would honor my mother and Mike, two of the kindest, selfless people this world has ever been graced with. So, what I'm asking you, yes, you reading this article: do something kind for someone today. Need a few ideas? Click here. But it can be anything that puts a smile on someone else's face. And then shoot me a note at ryan@patch.com describing what you did.

When I go to Pinelawn Cemetery on the 10th anniversary of my mother's death, I will kneel beside her grave and share those notes with her. I want her to be proud of me. But most of all, I want her to know that kindness still exists in this world and that we all have it in us to be that little boy at the ice cream truck.

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