Have you ever felt as if nobody truly understood what you were going through? You may have been going through the most difficult time in your life, but nobody felt any sympathy for you.
We live in a world where sympathy is in short measure, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Sometimes, it may even cross over into empathy, which has been described as feeling someone else’s pain in our hearts.
Hearing stories of sympathy can uplift your spirits and allow you to feel good about the world we live in. Here are 16 of those stories that will help you in ways you can’t imagine.
1. One day while I was working at a fast food joint, this lady left her Louis Vuitton bag on a table. I waited about 20 minutes but remember seeing her leave, and so I grabbed it and put it in lost and found. I never once looked inside.
A month went by. My boss said, “Hey, it’s been a month…do you want that bag?” I said sure and went in the back to retrieve it. I unzipped the top and to my surprise nothing was in it but a piece of paper. I opened up the piece of paper, and it was a receipt for the bag.
On the receipt was a note saying, “To the girl who needed a new purse during the holidays.” Whoever this lady was intended on doing this in the first place. I looked at the receipt….$1700 for this bag!? I carefully put my items in it and took it home and didn’t say another word about it.
That purse made me look good at a ton of job interviews. I still keep the bag because it reminds me of humbling days when I didn’t have much and reminds me to give back to others.
2. Many years ago, when I was first married, we had very little money and were living paycheck to paycheck. My wife was pregnant with our first, and I was working a part-time job. I went to the store a few days before payday to get only what we absolutely needed. Some bread. Some dishwashing soap. I think a jar of mayo. In all, about $10 worth of stuff.
At checkout, I swiped my debit card, hoping it would clear. The cashier deadpanned, “Declined. Try again.” I asked her to put an item back, then I swiped with the new total as a line formed behind me. The cashier, now perturbed, “Declined again.” I hung my head when I swiped that last time, but I was still ashamed when the card was approved for buying that measly loaf of bread.
I took my receipt and slunk out to my car, wanting to disappear, feeling absolutely humiliated, an embarrassment, a failure as a provider. Almost to the car, I heard the voice of a little girl behind me, the girl who was standing with her mother right behind me in line. “Mister! Mister!”
I turned around, and she reached out to hand me a plastic grocery bag. It was filled with the items I had the cashier put back. “It’s okay, we bought this for you.” Surprised, shocked, actually and humbled, I mumbled a “thank you,” walked to my car, put my head on the steering wheel and bawled like a baby. With shame, with gratitude, with the absurdity of the situation, with disappointment in myself as the “breadwinner” yet not being able to take care of basic needs.
It’s been about 25 years, but that memory is still vivid, and I’m still grateful to that little girl and her mom, and I still cry when I think of how such a small act can mean so much for a person in need. Since then, I’ve helped people whenever we could afford it (yep, even in grocery lines).
3.When I was 16, I was going with my family to New York, and it was supposed to be really hot there. I hadn’t been on airplanes very often, and didn’t know I should dress warm, especially on long flights. I wore a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and forgot to grab my sweatshirt out of my checked bag.
It was a night flight, and I was freezing trying to sleep. Attendants never came by, and I didn’t know I could ask for a blanket. I was away from my family next to this older, foreign tourist couple, and tried to do my best to sleep while I was freezing. I woke up after a few hours, and realized I wasn’t as cold as I was before. I sat up and saw I had this hand-knitted shawl wrapped around my shoulders.
The lady next to me must have seen the quizzical look on my face, as she then says in broken English, “You shake in sleep, I have this” pointing to the shawl. I thanked her profusely, and she says, “Go to sleep, he’s sleeping” pointing to her husband who had started to rouse. I fell back asleep for the rest of the flight and thanked her a million times more as we were getting off the plane. What a lovely woman.
4. When I was a very young and pregnant girl living in the south, I was used to getting a lot of rude stares or comments about having a baby so young and out of wedlock, but one very old lady came up to me and handed me $20 and said, “Hey honey, here’s to help with diapers, they get pretty expensive. Best of luck to you.” That moment of kindness will stick with me forever.
5. When I was in college, freshmen year, I was kind of in a funk talking to women. I guess that happens when you adjust from a small high school to a huge college. But I was more shy than I normally was. Well, I was at a party and caught a girl’s eye, and despite being shy, I summoned the courage to talk to her.
What resulted was me being really embarrassed. I don’t recall exactly what happened, but it was along the lines of I said hi, and she said something like, “Try somewhere else, 3’s shouldn’t talk to 10’s.” I also remember her saying it really loud and a few guys nearby laughing loudly about it and going on to exclaim that I got rejected. Well, I walked to another room to escape and felt someone following me.
I turn around to see literally the most beautiful woman I saw my entire 4 years of college. She went on to tell me that the girl I spoke to and her friends have been playing a game where they get guys to talk to them, then reject them, and that I should shrug it off. She told me to stick with her the rest of the night, and I’d be her “boyfriend.” She was a senior about to graduate, and I was just ending my first semester. But literally, that one act of kindness gave me my confidence back, and I dropped the newly acquired shyness that I had developed.
I saw her a few times around campus after that, and she’d run up to me and give me a huge hug. That would be a great feeling for anyone to do it, let alone her! She even sent me messages throughout my time in college seeing how I was doing.
6. I’m a student who studies during daytime and works as a waitress at night. I moved from another town 3 months ago and haven’t made any friends yet. And yesterday my tooth broke. The pain was terrible, unbearable. I couldn’t afford a dentist.
And so I’m working a shift, and every abrupt movement or loud sound literally explodes with pain. And then the other waiters on the shift come up to me and hand me an envelope, and there are all our tips for the shift in it. They said, “Here you go, baby! Go get your tooth fixed in the morning!” I even cried from this kindness.
7. A stranger just randomly gave me a pink rose. He was an older guy and the fact that he just gave it to me without saying anything with a smile on his face made my day, and week, and month now. I’ve never seen him since then.
8. In college I went through a deep depression and sadness, and was working as a housekeeper for a Comfort Inn over the summer break, which turned out to be an incredibly physically demanding job. I feel like the summer months of manual labor, totally alone for most of the day, gave me the time to work through some tough emotions.
Anyway, one day I was finishing up a room, hot and sweaty in the stifling heat (they didn’t air condition the hallways, just the rooms) and was completely exhausted and filthy. While loading the garbage onto my trolley, 2 beautiful men (sparkling eyes, well-dressed, skin so dark and smooth, beautiful big smiles) heading out of their room stopped and sang me a gorgeous acapella song, the texture and resonance of their voices echoing down the long empty hallway was unreal.
Turns out they were singers on their way to a performance. I will never forget that experience. It was about 12 years ago, but I still remember the way it felt to have someone know how much a little kindness and beauty can lift a spirit.
9. My first wife abandoned us when my son was an infant. It was rough, but I survived.
One evening I was at dinner with some friends. I had to change the baby, there was no table in the men’s room. I asked a lady leaving the ladies room if it was empty, and she checked for me, gave me the okay. While I was trying to get my diaper bag sorted, she came up and offered to change him.
I told her I had it, but she insisted, and put her arm around me. Apparently I’d been holding in a breakdown the whole time, and she saw right through it. I cried for a minute while a total stranger changed my infant son, thanked her profusely, and went back to dinner with my friends carrying a little less weight on my shoulders. No clue who she was, but she was an angel to me that night.
10. I loved my grandmother’s antique sugar and creamer set. I wanted one of my own when I got married, but my grandmother was still using hers. So I started my quest of searching for a similar set. Apparently that particular plastic set was either not popular or not many survived because it was incredibly hard to find.
I finally just posted a description of what I was looking for on an antiquing forum because I couldn’t even find an image of it, and a lady responded with a photo of the set she had. I asked her if she would sell it and told her why I wanted it. She responded that she would consider selling it, so I sent her my address and asked for a return address or a link to pay.
No response, but a couple weeks later I got the set in the mail (with no return address) and a sweet letter wishing me good luck in my new marriage and new home and the hope that I would cherish the set she sent me. This complete stranger that I had no idea who they were or even where they lived sent me this incredible gift. 13 years later and I am still using that same set and I do cherish it very much!
11. I was in an elevator all dressed up a couple of hours before my wedding. There was a guy who walked into the elevator, he looked at me and said, “Are you the groom?” I replied with, “Yeah.” Then he said, “You look calm, that means you’re doing the right thing.”
And that’s exactly what I needed to hear to start off the best day of my life. Thank you, elevator guy.
12. In my freshman year of high school I was an outcast, virtually all my old friends from middle school abandoned me for popularity, I guess I was “too dumb” or “unattractive” to join them, I became a loner. In P.E. class I always fell behind because I was pretty out of shape and just generally unathletic and knew people made fun of me.
Well, one day during our warm-ups I was running and one of the super popular athletic girls went out of her way to tell me she liked my shirt and all her friends looked at her weird. After that, I messaged her on Instagram and let her know how much it meant, and we’ve been friends ever since. I know that’s not really a big deal but to me that meant so much, and I’ll never forget it, it taught me how impactful a tiny act of kindness can be on someone’s life.
13. Our dog was hit by a car. A couple witnessed her get hit (did not hit her). They followed her to try and save her. After searching the woods, they could not find her.
Another random person noticed these people and asked what they were looking for. After explaining to this man they were looking for an injured dog, the man offered his hunting dog to track her scent. The dog ended up leading this group of strangers to our dog. They called me and then wrapped her up, and we met at the nearest vet emergency room.
After the shock of seeing our dog with a broken jaw and protruding eye, the couple said to us, “I know you are young, and I know what it’s like to be young, we can help pay for this.” The whole thing restored our faith in humanity. Our dog is alive and kicking after almost a year, but not without the complete kindness of strangers.
14. I was having a really tough time in my new waitressing job, and on one shift, no one had bothered to tell me the table numbers had been changed, so I was unaware of the new seating plan. Taking food to the wrong tables, and getting frustrated no one seemed to know what was happening, my manager suddenly stormed out, grabbed the plates from me and shouted at me to go back in the kitchen and be useful for once.
I was really upset, and felt so mortified as it was in front of a very busy restaurant/tearoom, and as my manager began to storm off, a little old lady stood up, told the manager what a piece of work she was and that she needed to buck up her ideas. She then came up to me, said I was doing a fine job, and gave me a proper nana hug. I could have cried.
15. My mom was living with me and had Alzheimer’s. We were waiting our turn to pay before leaving the dentist office. She overheard another woman say she couldn’t afford the amount they had quoted for whatever she needed. My Mom, God rest her soul, asked me, “Do I have money?” I told her yes, and she said, “Okay, I want to pay for that ladies’ dental bill.”
I had no idea who she was talking about because I hadn’t heard the conversation. The woman had gone to use the bathroom, but the young woman at the desk knew what my mom was referring to and said, “Her bill will be $275.” Without skipping a beat, my mom said, “Do I have enough money?” I said yes and she paid the bill. We left before she came, it was of the bathroom. My mom was so happy.
16. My cat (Max) escaped from the house one night, and I didn’t even realize he got out until the next morning. I had just gone through an awful breakup, and I was sick with worry and guilt.
At about 7 p.m. that evening, I got a knock on the door. A man asked if I was missing a cat. It turns out the man found Max after he’d been hit by a truck. He saw my cat laying in the road on the way to work, and stopped to see if he could do anything.
He was an electrician with a full day of house visits, so he drove around with my cat in his car all day as he went through his work day. He kept Max warm, gave him water, and even split his ham sandwich with him. I asked how he could possibly know it was my cat (he’s a master at getting out of his collar, so didn’t have his tags when the man found him).
Turns out, after his shift, he went door to door down the entire road where he found Max, asking if anyone was missing a cat. He said he loved cats, and would want someone to do the same for him. He went back to his cat and got my cat. The whole interaction lasted maybe 5 minutes, and I never even got his name.
My cat made a full recovery, and is sleeping next to me as I write this, 8 years later. I wish I knew who this man was, and I could thank him properly, I’ll never forget it.
