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It was a cold, dark morning. I walked into Starbucks, in desperate need of a warm jolt of caffeine. Just being enveloped in the aroma of a Starbucks is enough to get me salivating but this morning it was especially urgent. I placed my order with the barista and swiped at my phone to pay, when, as my luck would have it, I couldn’t get my Starbucks app to work! I know, I know- First World Problems! It wasn’t the end of the world, of course- just mildly inconvenient to have to dig through my very full bag and locate my wallet. And then the saintly woman behind me said “I’ll pay for her coffee with my app.”

I like to think of myself as someone who can see the good in all people, but that’s me being pretty dishonest with myself. The truth is that I usually do not have such great expectations. So I was blown away that someone waiting to order her coffee so kindly and randomly paid for mine. I offered to pay her back in cash but she refused, saying that it makes her happy to do something nice for someone else. So I thanked her (profusely, of course), and went about my day. It wasn’t such a big deal; it was just a cup of coffee, after all, but thinking about the generosity of a stranger kept me on a slight high throughout the day! (Okay, I’m sure the Venti Americano helped a bit, too.) More than that, though, it really inspired me.

I’m no saint, but I’m being realistic when I say I’m a pretty nice person. I just don’t know if my instinct would have told me to pay for the coffee drinker in front of me if her app didn’t work. Now I see things differently. A few days later I had just parked my car and was about to start on my errands when a woman with a baby came out of the car parked next to mine. “Excuse me!” she called out, trying to get my attention. She needed change for the parking meter and wanted to know if she could give me nickels and dimes in exchange for quarters. I gave her what she needed but when she counted her coins, she was a little short. She offered to go into the nearest store and get me the appropriate change to pay me back. It was cold, and she was out with her baby – the last thing she needed was to be going in and out of stores scrambling for change. I told her to keep the quarters and forget about my change. She looked at me like I had given her a thousand dollars and said “Really? Are you sure?”

Kind of like how I reacted when the woman in Starbucks offered to pay for my coffee. And ultimately, she has my coffee gifter to thank for those parking quarters because it was her small kindness that inspired me to help the mom with the baby pay for her parking. I hope my little gift to her carried her through the day and inspired her to pay it forward.