Stories of Kindness from Around the World

December marked the end of my final semester in college. When nearing a landmark event like graduation, I think it’s instinctive to take a step back and reevaluate, figure out what I have accomplished and what I want to accomplish.  This was a rough one for me.  Sadly I believe that college was a waste of my time; I don’t think I learned much that will help me in the “real world.”

In the wake of this depression, I tried to turn it into something semi-meaningful. I looked around at all the girls in my sorority who go through their day-to-day lives, fulfilling obligations, complaining about petty things, and losing perspective. I knew I was like that too and wanted to change.
 
Marissa and Mackenzie were two of my sorority sisters who had been best friends in the previous year. Naturally they became roommates. They shared clothes, school supplies, the same circle of friends, and similar schedules. Inevitably, their parallel lives became a source of discontentedness. They got on each other’s nerves over petty things. Their friendship weakened and their interactions were filled with arguments and conflicts. Worse yet, the arguments gradually turned into a passive resentment for one another.
 
Normally I do not make other people’s relationships and friendships my business. I think it’s patronizing to the people involved, and it makes everyone uncomfortable and defensive. Somehow, though, I could not get them off my mind. These girls had been representative of what I thought a good friendship looked like. They were everything to each other and now they were the antithesis.
 
I thought about I might do to help bring them back together. I remembered that the first few times I had met these girls, they were watching Grey’s Anatomy in our TV room, and eating brownies together. They were those yummy brownies that you microwave and pour hot fudge  on top of. Anyway, before I moved out of the sorority house, I bought two packages of warm delights, and wrapped them up with a tag addressed to these two girls. I left it outside of their bedroom door, in hopes that they would find it, reminisce, and enjoy the warm delights together. Even if they didn’t fully rekindle their friendship, I’m hoping that it helped them remember why they became friends in the first place.
 
Too often we let people in our lives slip through the cracks. We don’t have time to call or write. We get mad about silly things. We put rifts in our relationships by closing doors instead of trying to patch things up. At the very least, I hope that Mackenzie and Marissa went home for their holiday break remembering that they don’t actually hate each other as much as they might think they do.