Lilith D., Oakwood High School
Kindness Lasting Longer Than Days
No one is born with kindness-it’s taught. While some people are naturally caring, kindness is different. Some people are taught kindness because kindness was taught to them, others are taught kindness because they are surrounded by a lack of kindness.
My parents are kind and giving people. I was in sixth grade in 2021 when my mom donated clothes to a family that was helping new Afghani refugees move into Dayton. My mom asked if she could do more, they responded with a generous yes. And so did my mom. My mom and I collected stories about a whole community of people of different values, beliefs, and traumas. They were all broken and scared- their stories were heartbreaking.
My family came close in touch with one family: a husband and a wife. They were both newscasters in Afghanistan, but had to flee because of consistent heavy persecution. The wife spoke broken english. When I met her for the first time, she was a beautiful and intelligent woman. In her eyes I could see how lost and scared she looked. She would talk to me, in her broken english. When we passed the flower store, she remembered her dad’s garden. When I asked her about her family, she told me she missed them so much.
My family continued to give to this young couple. They would come over for dinner and we’d give them old furniture. As I helped more and more people my eyes, ears and heart opened. The pain and suffering that I had never seen laid in front of me. This experience already had given me an opportunity to open my life to a concern for refugees, but it did more than just that.
One day the couple had us over for dinner. When we entered their small cramped apartment, paint peeling off the walls; it seemed almost abandoned. We took off our shoes and entered the living room. Heaping bowls of rice with nuts and dried fruit in them covered the floor. Different breads and meats scattered throughout. More food than I ever thought my family could eat. When we sat on the floor to eat, they expressed their gratitude saying: “Thank you for helping us, you are my best friends.” My head spun and my eyes pooled. These people were lost and broken and given my family everything they had. The feeling lifted me and gave me a new purpose.
When I look back on when I helped these people I only see the future. This experience has inspired me to want to go into a job helping lost refugees and immigrants. I have now gone to an Afghani bachelorette party and there’s constantly Afghani rice in our fridge. I have learned so much about culture from this experience, giving me a bigger lens to look through. This act of service lasted more than just a day or a month, but it will last my whole lifetime because it has impacted every part of me.
