To a Loved One.... for a stranger, go here,

There is this Christmas concert my friends and I go to every year. Unfortunately, this year somehow my best friend couldn’t get a ticket. She was very sad that she couldn’t join us. So I asked around and found someone who sold me his ticket.  I put the ticket in her post box. When I was home again the phone rang, it was my friend totally excited telling me she found a ticket in her postbox. She really enjoyed the evening at the concert and is still guessing who gave her the ticket.

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The first I did was to take our dog out even though my sister had to do it. She was so surprised as that I said I would do this, usually there is a huge fight over whose turn it is. She thought something was wrong or strange, but she didn’t say anything. After I came back with the dog, my sister still thought there must be something wrong with me, but then she said "thank you“ and smiled.

It felt quite good to do such a kind little think thing as the reaction was a completely different one than usual. 

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For Christmas I went to my mother although I did not really want to. I had to travel and I have not always felt comfortable at home during a long time with her. Nevertheless I decided to visit her, her partner and his children. I did it because I knew how important my presence was for her. For her it means more than being together at Christmas. She sees it as a sign that I really accept her “new” family and that I make an effort. I think she knows that I did not really want to come at first and therefore valued my stay even more. In the end we had very nice days and I have profited as much as my mother. So from the perspective of today it gets difficult to say that I did it for her. It might be possible to say I did it for us.

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There is someone living inside my girlfriend. I do not know how the person looks like, sounds like or smells like. Not even if the person is male or female. I hardly know anything about this person, but in about one month it will probably be the one I love most. I believe that whenever I put my hand on my girlfriends belly the person inside gets to know me a little better. I believe that it feels the warmness of my hand and can probably even smell how I smell like. It is more or less the only act of kindness that I can practice to my child at the moment. I hope that it enjoys, but I do not know what my child tries to tell me by kicking. I understand it as a way of communicating.

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I chose my best friend Norma, because she has always been there for me and since both of us started to go to college, we seldom had the chance to see each other. I know the act was supposed to be anonymous, but I had big problems thinking of something that she wouldn’t tell me and ask me about. Consequently I decided to show her my love and appreciation directly. A few days after Christmas I started collecting pictures of our times together, put all of them together in a book and added some letters and short quotations. I tried to express my feelings and it took me a while to finish the book.  Just a day before I left my hometown to go back to Lüneburg, I put the present in front of her door, so that someone would find it before entering. As soon as she found it the next day, she called me. It was the most wonderful thing to hear her being so happy about it. She told how much this meant to her and that she has never gotten something like that before. Both of us ended up crying, realizing how much this friendship has gone through and that it was something really special to have a friend like that!

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My mother likes to watch the birds in the garden. Because of this I decided to buy bird food for winter and arranged it in the garden. One day later my mother saw the bird and asked who has bought the bird food. I just said “I don't know but my mother realized the smile on my face.

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Over the Christmas holidays I was visiting and staying with my sister in her apartment close to Munich. Unfortunately she had to work these days so I was on my own during the day.

One afternoon I used my time and cleaned and organized her apartment, tidied up the kitchen, bought new food, cooked a meal and made some additional Christmas decorations. She did not have enough time to do this before because of work.

So when she got home in the evening she was very excited and proud of her little sister. We then had enough time to drink some wine, have dinner and talk. That was a very good night for us both because we finally spent some time together again after not seeing each other one whole year.

I really enjoyed doing the acts of kindness, because I love to see people smiling and happy. Especially my sister is very important to me and I was so happy to see her happy.

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I found myself close to my grandma’s apartment so I decided to go over for a few minutes to have a little chit chat. When I arrived I saw that the newspaper had just been put into her mailbox. I changed my plans, went to buy her favourite chocolate and came back to put both her newspaper and the chocolate in front of her door on the fourth floor. My grandma always complains about all the stairs she has to go down and upstairs again just to get her newspaper every morning. Since she has a bad knee it’s not as easy for her as it once used to be. I know that it bothers her not to be able to do all the things that weren’t a problem just a few years ago – my grandma simply doesn’t like the fact that age is leaving its traces on her. Anyway I saved her the way down and up the stairs that morning plus I left her some chocolate. Until know I don’t know how she reacted when she opened her door to get her newspaper that morning. She may have thought that one of her neighbours got the newspaper for her but she probably wondered about the chocolate since only my family knows which kind she likes best. I didn’t leave a note deliberately, I just wanted her to be happy that someone thought of her and wanted to do her a favour. It doesn’t matter if she knows it was me, it’s her having been happy at this very moment is what counts.

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As I was going to spend only two weeks there I was quite busy with Christmas rituals and meeting old friends. Unfortunately around Christmas my grandma was going to be more or less alone, even my father, who lives in the same house with her, was not taking into account that it could be very ignorant to leave her alone. So I decided to be with her as much as possible and realized that she was so thankful even for a few minutes. Not to forget that for me this wasn’t a bad time at all – I enjoyed more and more listening to her stories from an 80 year long lifetime.

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One of my closest friends found out six months ago that he had lymphoma cancer. We were all really shocked with the news. Since then, I haven’t seen him, and I haven’t be able to support him through this difficult stage of his life. As an act of kindness, and because it was Christmas’s time, I decided to send him an anonymous Christmas card. I wrote him quotes about hope, love, strength and perseverance, expecting that my friend would realize that he is not alone and that with a good attitude he is more likely to succeed in this fight. I don’t know, however, if he got my mail. Still I hope, that if he did receive it, he was happy to know that someone was thinking of him.

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I cooked the christmas dinner for my parents, my brother and me. Since my brother and my mother wanted to go to church and my father was still busy putting decoration on the tree and wrapping presents, there was no time for a complicated meal. But since I´m not religious and don´t like going to church, I volunteered for cooking and made a very well-tasting goose with red cabbage and dumplings. It was a very good feeling to cook for the whole family, since we have very high expectations concerning the christmas dinner and everything has to be perfect. But my parents and my brother were very thankful that I did the cooking and they had enough time go to church and do the last preparations for christmas eve.

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As for doing something special for someone that I care without them knowing about it, it was much more difficult. Mostly because I don’t have the people that care about around me here. The only thing kind I did was to talk to my uncle for Christmas and New Year. He’s having not the best time of his life right now. He’s divorcing his wife and my aunt got the custody of the children. It was his first Christmas alone ever. I called him to support him, so that he didn’t felt that lonely although I was across the ocean. I think he felt a bit better after I called him, it was unexpected.

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The act of kindness towards a loved one was harder to perform. To tell an act of special extra-kindness would be hard for me. If I should judge myself on the kindness-scale I think I did O.K. when I spontaneously quit my job half a day early to support my former girlfriend, when buying and transporting a new bed from a city 30 kms. next to ours. I know that she is  struggling to emancipate herself from her parents (which aren’t easy to handle for sure) and to find her own, independent way of life. I think she is a great person and I really want her to be successful achieving her independence. We even had to end our relationship indirectly due to this her struggle.
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She had to go through a hard time to earn the money and get the permission to buy this bed. It had turned from a piece of furniture into a symbol. I quit work half a day early without telling her about the hassle and the financial loss that I suffered. I did not want her to refuse my help out of her reaction of “I don’t want to cause issues”, because I knew how important this symbol was to her. I organized a car big enough for the transport (She should not be stopped by practical issues) and spend a day with her putting the bed together, knowing that it was likely for me to get hurt emotionally (being in the same room when her “boyfriend” called her).

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The first one I did to my mother. I stopped smoking. Well, it sounds like I did it more to myself, but I did it because of my mother. I knew that she was suffering knowing that I smoked, and she hated it. Actually I liked smoking cigarettes. And when I stopped smoking I told her that I understood that it was bad for my health and not because of her. Now I know that she was happy to hear that. Another thing in this story is that it was really hard for though I tried to show that it wasn't. I guess my mother knew that it was hard for me. I think it was a good act of kindness. Now I feel myself much better and I am sure that I did right and I made people I love happier just a little bit. 

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This year I made for my mum an Advent Calendar. I bought a mix of her favourite sweets, wrapped them into turquoise tissue paper and put them together on to a rope a long her bed. I did that early in the morning while she has been taking a shower. When she discovered it, she has been very delighted and looked at me a little bit like I was a child again.

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My mother has always been a real insecure person. When she has been doing something she isn’t quite sure afterwards if she has been acted correctly. This is most noticeable in an argument or a quarrel. It’s hard for her to resist and keep her opinion. I think she has never really learned to express her needs. This is maybe the case because she grew up in a family where this was not common. A lot of people in past times were not used to talk about their feelings, needs, dreams or things they would love to do. They weren’t even talking much about love, I think so.

We spent our Christmas holidays in Austria this year in a little house with the whole family. My bigger sister was really moody the first days. She was shouting at everyone including my parents for no reasons. We let her do this to us some days until it was enough. Me and my little sister talked to her and asked her why she is acting like that? She was really sorry and tried to change her behaviour the rest of the days. I think my little sister and I did this not only to protect ourselves but also we wanted to help our mother because she wasn’t able to say something and we know how helpless she is in such situations.

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My best friend and her boyfriend were in big trouble. I wrote him a message and told him that he shall try to talk to her because they just had a misunderstanding. He actually did that on the same day and they talked about the problem. Now they are fine! She actually don’t know that I talked to him!

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There is one thing, but I don’t know if you can consider it to be a kind thing. It was big for me. When I decided to apply for University, I only knew that I wanted to do bilingual primary teaching (teaching in English as well as in German) like my sister did. It is called Europalehramt (European teaching post).You can only do this in Baden-Württemberg, a state very much south of Lüneburg.

I applied at a University of Freiburg, which is in Baden-Württemberg. I also applied in a couple of other cities around Germany as well as in Lüneburg.  Since my girlfriend already started her cultural studies at the Leuphana University she couldn’t change University because they only offer this in Lüneburg. I decided to accept the place at the university in Lüneburg. Otherwise our relationship would have suffered because of the big distance.  I’ve would have very much preferred to do bilingual studies in Freiburg but then we wouldn’t be today where we are.

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My act of kindness to a person I love was to my boyfriend. When he came back from work, he had sore feed and his back hurt. I said I will massage his back so that he feels better but he rejected this offer because he did not want to massage me in return as we usually do. So I explained that I just wanted to give a massage to him to do him something good but not to get something back. Then, he accepted and felt better afterwards.

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It was a normal day. Not one of the public holiday days. We watched a movie at my house in the evening and fell asleep after a while. The next day I woke up really early. My boyfriend was still asleep so I decided to get up and start preparing breakfast. It took me a little while because I wanted to do different things like scrambled eggs, fruits, rolls and also coffee and orange-juice. After finishing everything I went upstairs to wake up my boyfriend with an awesome breakfast in bed.

At first he didn’t like to be woken up but then he saw what I had already prepared and smiled and kissed me wonderfully.

Act of kindness to my brother

One day during our Christmas break my mom, my dad and me were sitting at the table eating lunch without my brother. He was at his girlfriend’s house and came back later after we were done eating. I was still in the kitchen when he sat down and looked hungry around. I thought I could heat up his lunch for him if he still wanted it. So I grabbed everything out of the fridge and put it in the microwave. After a few minutes the food was ready and he took it happily from me.

Act of kindness to my mom

While my mom had to work I was alone at home and I thought I could clean up the house a little before she would come back. So I cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed the living room.

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After not seeing my love for a long time I stood up early at 8 o´clock one morning in this vacation in order to prepare breakfast and bring it to bed. We both enjoyed it y I got a very impressed smile and a tender kiss. 

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