There are statistics about almost everything that people do: about how we dress, and how we behave.

But I googled random acts of kindness, and there’s no statistic about how many people do them. Or how often.

I think the obvious reason is that most of us have done a random act of kindness (or helpfulness, if you’ve seen that commercial) at some time in our lives, but I would hope it would be several times.

But then I thought, what about the less obvious reason?

Kindness just can’t be measured. Remember what the fairy godmother says in the 2015 Cinderella movie? “What’s a bowl of milk? Nothing. But kindness makes it everything.” How can we know the effect of a single act of kindness? I love those videos that you can find on YouTube of people doing an act of kindness and it setting off a chain reaction of kindness. I think a lot of us might be skeptical about that actually happening, but would we be skeptical if we were told that a single act of unkindness (like cutting someone off in traffic) could trigger a whole chain of people being rude to  the next person they meet? If being mean is contagious surely being kind also can be contagious. Though it is true that  kindness can be harder to catch, if you’re not in the habit of it already.

Kind means proceeding from, showing, or having benevolence.

Have you heard that story about the horseshoe nail? For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the message was lost; for want of the message the battle was lost; for want of the battle the war was lost; for want of the war the empire was lost. All for the want of a horseshoe nail.

An Act of Kindness is kind of like that horseshoe nail, now, what if it wasn’t lost?

Brought to you by Natasha.