What I said, more or less: Recently I heard a story on NPR. A woman was shoveling out her car after a snowstorm. Another woman, a stranger, stopped her car, got out her own shovel, and helped the first woman get the job done. The first woman asked, “Why’d you do that?” The woman who stopped to help replied, “I had five minutes and I saw you needed help. That’s how I try to live my life, help where I can when I can.” She got in her car and drove away. The first woman took the second woman’s motto to heart and started living her own life with that simple rule, “help where I can, when I can.”

The actions you take have consequences, like ripples in a pond. The smallest act of service can affect more than just the person you’re helping in the moment. It lifts that person’s mood. Maybe ten minutes later they held a door for someone else or bought a coffee for a stranger in line behind them because you set an example. Maybe it sets them on a whole new path.