I still can't believe that it has been 19 days since I was last in the office. People were as calm as they try to be, but there was tension in the air. It was almost like this physical thing that you can reach out and touch, and now I still can't shake it off. It has been 11 days since I started prompting to cope, and I must admit, things have been better, ever since I focused on my reflections instead of the tension that has been going on around me, specially in Facebook and Twitter.

Right now, since we cannot rely on anyone else to make us safe from the virus, and we certainly cannot rely on our government, let's just leave them to their political bickering and just focus on helping each other and being kind to one another.

Random acts of kindness is what will get us through these trying times. My prompt for today asks, "What is something kind that happened to you today? How can you pay that kindness forward?" I want to focus on doing something kind for someone else instead of waiting for kindness to come to me. I hope that counts.

I have been reading requests from the sanitation workers (garbage collectors) that has been circulating around Facebook, asking people to set aside their used face masks so that they can reuse them and have something to wear to protect themselves with. It was so heartbreaking to hear that really, there is no where they can get face masks too. They need our help to protect them.

That got me thinking on what I can do for our village garbage collectors, something I can do to help them even in some little way. I remembered that about 2 months ago, I was able to buy face masks from our small village grocery, which we have forgotten about already since my husband was able to get more before the quarantine.

So when I heard the truck approaching our house this morning, I gave 2 of our garbage collectors 3 unused face masks each. I know it wasn't much, but it was the most that I could spare without sacrificing our own supply.
I saw how happy and appreciative they were, and it actually felt good to make someone's day. Being kind to someone is an opportunity to strengthen a friendship or make a social connection to anyone, both of which are linked to improve mood (so they say). When I saw that my small act of kindness worked, our shared smile made me feel happier. I wanted to make our garbage collectors feel connected in some way, let them know that they don't go unnoticed or unappreciated. If I was able to lift their spirits even for just a couple of hours this morning, I know that it will have a chain reaction somewhere.

And if there’s a chance that my random act of kindness might be returned at some point by someone else, I'll take it.