Kindness, gratitude and holding doors

A few weeks back, I was walking past Pegram toward my off-campus house in the pouring rain—my headphones were in and my hood was up, a demeanor that practically screamed, "I am cold, miserable and ready to get the heck home." Out of the corner of my eye, someone stepped outside and held the door for whom I assumed was his friend following behind him. As I walked past the dorm, I saw him let the door swing shut behind him. No one else followed. He was waiting, in the cold miserable rain, for cold miserable me.

Let me ask you something, Duke. Following the two-year anniversary of the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook—have you given thanks today? Have you been kind and grateful and smiled in appreciation?

Not just the volunteer-at-a-local-shelter or help-an-elderly-lady-to-her-car kind of nice. I mean the easy kind that happens on a daily basis—the kind of nice where you smile and say hi to the kid from your freshman year writing class as you walk by each other on the plaza—instead of mindlessly perusing your phone to avoid eye-contact. And not just the stuffed-with-pumpkin-pie-on-Thanksgiving kind of thanks—the kind of thanks where, instead of plowing your way home after a long day of classes and ignoring everyone in your line of vision, you realize that rain is cold but you’re lucky to have a warm home to go back to, your backpack is heavy but you’re lucky to have books to read and school is tough but there are helping hands holding doors everywhere you look.

Two years ago, I returned home to Connecticut for the holidays to a community in mourning. A town of funeral processions and memorial sites. A town of heartbreaking tragedy.

My hometown is next to Newtown, where 26 students and faculty were shot at Sandy Hook Elementary. Everyone I know at home was in some way or another affected by the events of Dec. 14—a friend, a teacher, a neighbor lost. A community rattled. We watched the funeral processions drive through the center of town, a sea of black cars and flashing lights. We made trips to the silent, solemn grocery store, giving out nods and faint smiles as if to acknowledge that we’d at least made it through another day.

But amid the tragedy, there were small reminders of hope and outpourings of kindness—in the teddy bears and green ribbons adorning the streets leading up to my old middle school, the new housing point for the Sandy Hook students. In the candy bars on windshields, in the parking lots and the trails of strangers paying for each other’s coffees at local stores. The extra hugs and kisses and phone-calls around the holidays and that extra effort to fit in one more “I love you”.

At certain points in our lives—dictated by tough times, heartbreaking tragedy or federal holidays—we are more conscious that life is fragile and that hugs and kisses and laughter are important. That we can’t take anything for granted and that we have a thousand reasons, right here and right now, to be thankful.

But then life goes on. And we have this tendency to forget our gratitude, or at least let it slip to the back of our minds. This tendency to get caught up in school and work and papers and tests and parties and google calendars exploding with colors, planned to the last second. We’re rushing down the Bryan center plaza, sprinting to catch the C-1, sulking back from Perkins at 2 am—and it takes a single freshman graciously holding open a door to remember that sometimes we need to slow the heck down.