This morning I was walking from the bus stop to the office and I passed Chaos Cafe, which I do practically every morning. This morning though, the lady in the window facing the street said "You look like you could do with a free coffee."
I don't know how much it costs to make a coffee and I didn't ask her but as she was making it, she explained that she was having a really bad morning and that she wanted to get back at the world through ruining the system by being randomly kind to people. Admittedly she didn't use those words exactly and the words that she did use contained liberal sprinklings of "F". Her method of exacting revenge upon the world was to do something which will confuse it.
I had barely got through the front door at not quite a quarter past eight, when a client of ours and my boss who were part way through a meeting, noticed that I had a cup of coffee and thought that that was a capital idea. They up and left everything and went out of the door, to return ten minutes later; having decided to tee up lunch later in the day at that same cafe. By my reckoning, seven people for lunch would easily be more than a hundred dollars.
I do not believe in karma by a long shot. Karma broadly assumes that what you give will be returned and my general impression of the kosmos is that what people get back is almost unrelated to what they give. In general, people almost never get what they give or even what they deserve. The kosmos and the world that we've built for ourselves, tends to reward absolutely shocking, awful, and terrible behaviour, and does so overwhelmingly in favour of sociopaths, hucksters and shysters.
Kindness is an expensive proposition and very quickly runs headlong into a conflict with the self-interest of not only the sociopaths, hucksters, and shysters of the world but also the ordinary tired people who carry the weight of the world and the work of the world on their shoulders.
I can very much see how a simple act of senseless random kindness is an act of revenge. In a world which is practically designed to be a series of transactions where everyone is trying to maximise their own personal comfort and happiness, including at the expense of other people, an act of senseless random kindness almost appears an act of terrorism. When all about is unkind and impersonal, an act of kindness is downright revolutionary.
I have no idea how or why I looked like I could do with a free coffee and I don't know to what degree that was actually true but I do know that the trajectory of the entire day was changed for me, as well as for that lady at Chaos Cafe. Coffee helps you do stupid things faster but kindness helps everyone be happier.
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