26
votes
What stranger made a big difference in your life?
A favor they did for you
Or a comment they made that you still think about
Or a realization they helped you have
And so on...
Tell us the story of that stranger, and how they affected you.
A couple of decades back, I'm on my way to a job interview after being out of work for good bit, if I don't get this job I start at a pizza place two days later to try to not get evicted from my apartment, and I get a flat.
It rained earlier in the day, everything is still very wet, road spray still kicked up with every car going by.
I'm on the side of the highway in a thrift store suit.
So it's time to change a tire and show up to an interview dirty, late, or both to beg for mercy and a job.
Open the trunk to the car I'm borrowing from a friend to find while there is a spare tire, there is no jack.
I'm now simply going to be a no call, no show to this interview, be making pizzas for minimum wage in 48 hours, and about to start walking down the highway shoulder toward an exit in hopes of finding a payphone to call someone to get them to bring me a jack while contemplating throwing myself into traffic with every step.
Before I can do so an old GMC conversion van pulls up behind me.
Out pops a hispanic man. I say hi, he says hola, he looks at the tire and asks "Yack?" while making the up and down pumping motion of a jack - I respond "No jack. Telfono." while pointing down the highway to indicate I was headed out to call someone.
He goes to the back of his van, pulls out a hydraulic jack, I tell him thank you and try to take it from him; I'm not trying to have someone that has the tools I need to also change the tire. He says "No, no, no." and proceeds to change my tire without asking.
His wife has also gotten out of the van, opened the sliding side door, told me to sit there, and given me a cup with cool brown liquid in it that I now know to be tamarind agua fresca.
Man is almost finished, I intend to pay what I can for his services, to repay this very kind and generous favor he has done for me, check my wallet and I have $20 to my name, I pull out one of the tens and try to hand it to him.
He refuses.
I follow him to the back of his van as he puts the jack away.
He still refuses.
I'm doing everything I can to insist he takes the money and he won't.
I go back around to the side of the van and try to hand it to his wife, she refuses as well, I finally get her to just take it by putting it in her hand.
I thank them again and head back to my car.
His wife comes up to me just before I close the door and hands me a bundle of tamales wrapped in aluminum foil. I thank her again and drive to the interview, speeding, arrive with one minute to spare.
I get offered the job that day, start the next week, and while I've had a lot of jobs since then, that one was a catalyst for where I am now.
I get back to my apartment and reflect on the day, make plans to figure out how I'm going to get to work next week, do the math of how much money I'll have to pay towards back rent and still be able to eat.
Eating for the first time that day sounds like a good idea and I do have tamales...
I open the foil and inside the first fold is the ten dollar bill I handed that sweet woman.
I, alone in my apartment kitchen, standing over a foil wrapped pack of tamales with a wet ten dollar bill, breakdown and start to cry. Shit had been nearly too much to bear for a long time and it all comes rushing out.
I now keep a hydraulic jack, cordless impact, sockets for all the common lugnut sizes, and good jumper cables in my vehicles at all times and have used them to jumpstart or change the tires of an unknown number of strangers over the years. Now that I'm in a more northern state I'll be adding a recovery rope to the loadout.
I have a favor to repay over the course of a lifetime and I'm nowhere close to doing so.
What luck, that's a beautiful story.
Not sure if you've seen it before, but that was remarkably similar to the famous 'Today you... Tomorrow me' story from Reddit way back when.
I hope this stereotype of helpful Hispanics lending helping hands on the sides of roads takes off.
Never read that, but am unsurprised it's not the first time something similar has happened. I grew up and spent my entire life, until last year, living in Texas and I have nothing but respect for every Hispanic person and immigrant I've ever met.
@wes
Wow, thanks for sharing, and for making such an effort to pay it forward. It definitely makes me think about my own preparedness.
I hope I'm not detracting by asking this, but have you read the "Today you, tomorrow me" story on reddit? It describes a very similar experience.
If you live in areas with higher drug use, you might also consider keeping Naloxone nearby. This is an injection which prevents opioid overdose. It's administered when somebody is passed out, and can save lives in the right situation.
I love this story and I absolutely knew you weren't going to leave that interaction without food well before you got to that part :D
While it is honorable that you do what you can to help people in similar need, I just want to say that you are in no way obligated to do so. The fact that you've done this more than once already has certainly balanced out the karma, if that's something you believe in.
(My thoughts directed at a general audience below.)
I'm mostly making this comment to say that if someone is in a similar situation, but doesn't have the ability to change a tire, it doesn't mean they're in debt eternally.
What's most important is to try to be a good person. Remember that everyone else is another person, and just like you, they have their own unique past, present, and thoughts on the future. Be kind in ways within your means and comfort/safety level. Think twice before acting on anger. Help others for their benefit, not just for popularity on social media. Acknowledge that you will disagree with many people on many topics, but that it doesn't make them less human. Some of these things are easier said than done, and just because you say/do something you regret does not mean you are a bad person - just continue to strive to be the best person you can be.
Not a single person but a bunch of people. On the last day heading back from a 3 week camper van trip, we were going through Germany when one of the tyres pretty much blew up. We were in the middle of nowhere, clearly in an industrial area with many huge trucks passing by. Unfortunately the camper was stopped in a pretty inconvenient spot partly blocking trucks from making a turn (they were huge and there were many).
We were able to call for assistance but it was going to take several hours. While we waited, a lot of people stopped to check if we were ok. Most notably:
We don't speak German at all, and none of the people who stopped spoke English, so we relied a lot on google translate. They were all very eager to help despite the language barrier. It was reassuring that even in the middle of nowhere, a bunch of people who owed us nothing were willing to go out of their way to help. It was a reminder to myself and a lesson for my kids that people are generally kind and want to help when they can.
Story time:
Apparently I was like 2 or 3. My aunt (dad’s younger sister) was “watching” me while my mom and dad were working at the docks.
According to them, my aunt got distracted by the TV and I vanished. They panicked, because they thought that I had jumped into the nearby river. I would have been dead if that had been the case.
Instead, I apparently walked across the busy street (not necessarily safer).
After searching everywhere for what felt like hours, a black gentleman, likely of French origin, came around the corner, holding me in his arms. I was playing dead. Everyone thought I had been hit by a car and gave up the ghost. I then apparently spooked them, and the gentleman happily handed me over.
He then immediately vanished without a trace.
A stranger basically saved me from getting run over or getting kidnapped that day.
Thankfully, I don’t remember a thing.
I heard this story from all parties involved at least once.
Quite the child, knowing that being found alive was too easy for your parents and that they needed a little more stress in their lives.
I kid you not, until I was about 3 or 4, all the members of both sides of my family used to say that I was possessed by a demon. That’s how inconceivably troublesome I was.
Bonus story as an example (not related to the topic):
I was around the same age as the previous story. My mom says that she left me alone at home for just two minutes to go do something outside. When she came back, I had thrown five out of six eggs, that were inside a carton on the table, on the floor.
My mother came in and saw what I did. She saw me holding the last egg. She warned not to throw it on the floor. I laughed in her face and did it anyway.
She proceeded to give me the beating of the century.
My brother had a similar escapade. He left a store where we were shopping for clothes and walked home at the age of three.
This didn't greatly effect my life but it makes me chuckle when I remember it.
One day, 3 or 4 years ago, my friend and I were walking to a night out. We'd put on pretty flamboyant outfits because it was a dumb theme night at a bar.
Anyway, walking down the street some guy, clearly extremely drunk or on drugs, took great offence to this and started screaming at us homophoic insults.
Neither of us are gay, not that it mattered, and I didn't particularly feel unsafe as the guy was completely wrecked but he was really upset about it and we tried to calmly continue.
That's when a kind man from across the street noticed our plight and ran over shouting "HEY YOU, LEAVE THOSE NICE LADS ALONE!" then punched the guy. We said thanks and he gave us a thumbs up.
One of the perks of living in a LGBT friendly city even if you're not LGBT!
Late 2018. My long-distance girlfriend broke up with me within days of her travelling (from Japan) to the UK to study, roughly a week after my 27th birthday. We stayed friends for maybe another month then had a falling-out and completely severed contact. Neither of us had tried to get back in touch since, even seven years later. At that point the breakup nearly destroyed me and I was in a really rough spot mentally. What stopped my descent down an incel rabbit hole was discovering the law of attraction.
I started researching various New Thought philosophies through browsing various subreddits and buying/reading e-book copies of The Secret and books written by various authors like Neville Goddard, Napoleon Hill, Joseph Murphy, Vadim Zeland, Dr Joe Dispenza, etc. I tried various things to change my reality, writing down my desires and affirmations, the lullaby method, daily meditations with binaural beats, SATS (state-akin-to-sleep, where you bring yourself to a relaxed nearly-asleep state and imagine a scenario where your wish has already been fulfilled to rewrite your subconscious mind and change your reality.)
During an evening after work, I went to a random pub near the city centre to study towards one of my accountancy courses, when a random black guy approaches me, introduces himself as "Ed", and starts a conversation. We talked about our personal lives, what I was doing (studying) and he mentioned that he was something of a spiritual guy. I mentioned Neville Goddard. His face lit up.
"I AM." He knew exactly who I was talking about. He immediately asked for my number and we started talking through WhatsApp occasionally.
Haven't been in touch with Ed for a few years. His phone number is still in my contacts list, but I haven't messaged in the last few years. Not sure if he still remembers me.
As for if I believe in the LOA? I don't know...
On one hand, I have noticed that certain good/bad things have revolved around my mood and mindset. This isn't something I've been able to directly control, and I outright suck at meditation so it's plausable that my inability to relax my body and bring myself to a state akin to sleep may be affecting results.
However, the community is full of grifters. About 99% of YouTubers covering LoA topics are just trying to peddle their own manifestation courses or coaching classes. Even the (now suspended) power-tripping lead moderator of the Joseph Murphy subreddit was selling his own coaching lessons whilst simultaneously calling out everybody else on their grift. Even when you look at /r/nevillegoddard and /r/lawofattraction a lot of the posts read like people stuck in a cult or like creative writing exercises that have no basis in truth.
In my halcyon youth, I once disseminated a discourse—its subject now eludes my recollection—on an online forum. An unfamiliar interlocutor retorted, not by engaging with the substance of my exposition, but by deriding my employment of what they deemed “$10 words.” Consequently, I have moderated my utilization of sesquipedalian terminology in subsequent digital missives, and I express my profound gratitude to that enigmatic critic for illuminating the fallacy of my linguistic proclivities.
Not on spirutual level, but I had such a moment.
We were travelling with my brother from Nürburgring back home with car borrowed from out friend (normal everyday car) and we just got on autobahn (highway) and after a few kilometers I noticed coolant temperature needle topped off. I immediatelly switched on heating on full blast but only cold air went from the vents. I realized we have no coolant. My brother eased on the throttle and we managed to get to nearest rest spot (a few kilometers) - luckily we were in diesel car and those are known for not heating up that fast.
On the rest stop we managed to fill the coolant tank with pure water (there were toilets with water tap) and found out the T-junction on rubber hoses cracked and water was coming out through there - not much, but enough to not continue on our way (still hundreds of kilometers to go).
And that's when stranger came in. A guy from Romania driving an european pickup (like Citroën Berlingo) stopped by and asked what is wrong. We discussed it a bit (using English) and he managed to find a bit of epoxy-putty in his car. He gave it to us and went on his way. We used it to kinda wrap the T-junction and while it cured for a while, I run to one of the trucks (semi, for US readers) and managed to get (electrical) tape and wrapped the epoxy with it so it doesn't come lose.
We drove all the way home with this fix. The car needed maintenance after that (milling the engine head flat as it was warped a bit) but drove perfectly fine.
I'll be forever thankful to that Romanian guy whose name I didn't even know. I'd love to let him know we managed our way home thanks to him and his epoxy-putty.
EDIT: We were on budget trip, if it wasn't obvious. Towing the car to service was an option but only at the last resort. And since it was Sunday and we had to go to work the next day, we couldn't even sleep on the rest stop and buy the damaged part the next day somewhere around (and since it was VW concern car, that wouldn't be a problem).