No matter how harsh the world is, there are people who do not allow it to ruin their gentle compassionate hearts. Tonight, I just witnessed one of them.

(Found this diary entry and think that the realization might be useful to someone else too. I decided to post it with minor editing to keep the people in the story unrevealed.)

I just finished one of my classes this evening when a friend asked for my approval to let another classmate be our teammate. That day the lecturer asked us to form a group and we’ve promised each other to be teammates since the beginning of the term. He directly turned to me when the class ended and dropped the name of someone who wanted to be on the same team as us. Among the students we could pick from, he argued that we needed to get this person into the team. I wondered why he decided to take someone who I considered didn't academically perform well in the class to be a groupmate. However, I respect his decision thus I nodded. Of course, I still had the curiosity while saying “bye and I’ll see you next week” to him when we were almost separated. He was supposed to go to the car park while I’d go to the light rail station when he stopped and said:

“Nur, you know he struggled with English and I don't think his individual assignment mark would be good. Therefore, it's an opportunity for us to raise his mark. I hope you don't mind that we help him," as if could read my mind, he explained something I’d already let go unanswered. "I meant, we can do that while teaching him a bit so that he could understand the material better."

There was a brief silence I can even hear the sound of the wind blowing. The realization hit me. While we weren't necessarily excellent students, we could be a small help to him. After hearing the reason, I don't really mind that.

However, I do really mind about something else. It is about me and how I see the world recently. For the longest time I can remember, my approach to life was to never see it as a competition. If there is someone I need to compete with, it is myself in the previous time. Hence, I don't necessarily mind the mark that much. Even so, I wasn't at the level of "intentionally" working with someone that possibly bring my performance down. I am happy to help people but not at that point if something rather important (like my grade because I have a big responsibility as a scholarship student) is at stake. On top of that, recently I feel that the constant run to catch up with the pace of the hectic world unconsciously made me slightly less considerate and thoughtful. Therefore, hearing that explanation felt like being hit in the head with a hammer.

I nodded once again while uttering, “I appreciate your thoughtful act. Let's help him as much as we can.” and then continued my steps. My brain can’t help but reprocess the conversation with this “government buddy” (how we call each other since we both work for the governments of our respective countries) when I arrived at the station. First and foremost, we are humans. As humans, it would be beautiful if we could be generous in doing virtuous actions by offering genuine support and comfort to other people. Rather than other indicators, being kind is the ultimate "performance". It matters more than the high marks on a university transcript.

In the hurried competitive world we live in, it's easy to forget to exercise kindness so this moment is a reminder to put a great amount of thought and effort into performing kind gestures. I am glad in the way of practicing kindness that always becomes my annual goal, along the line, I witnessed this piece of example from a friend that is so willing to do kind actions. I am grateful that I am once again reminded to get out of my own little world and start committing on make kindness a priority over any achievement in the world.