This I Believe Essay

A friendly hello once in awhile does not harm anyone. I believe that if you greet a person with a pleasant smile and genuine “hello” and a “how are you doing?” you can make their whole day much better. It is the simple act of kindness that everyone is able to show. Once while standing in the long line for the checkout at Wal-Mart, I noticed the cashier looked very tired and upset, and all the customers were in a rush to buy their things and leave. It was just a busy day, and rarely a few customers even said “thank you” to her. When it was our turn for the checkout, I simply said a kind “hello” to her, and instantly she smiled back and asked me how I was. She started to make conversation and even joked about how busy it was because of the back-to-school season.
As we were leaving, she told us to have a great day with a really big smile. When we were in the car, I reflected on what happened there, and I thought more about it and then I came up with my belief.
One question always bothers me, why are people so mean to one another? Maybe it is their large egos, or maybe they just do not feel like being nice. I still ask myself this: “Wouldn’t a person want to be treated with kindness?” There is a saying by someone very intelligent that “To earn respect, you have to give respect.” The same thing goes with kindness; you should not expect someone to be nice to you, when you aren’t nice to the the person.
Sometimes people are not nice to you, so you want to be the same way with them. They might have not done anything mean, but you can tell they do not like you for whatever reason. In the 6th grade, there was this very talkative girl in my class named Elizabeth. She was always nice to everyone in the class, but for some reason, she never said anything to me. It was a small class; everyone was friends with each other, so I had a feeling that she really didn’t like me. It actually made me really mad because she was nice to everyone else and talked to everyone except me. I’m a self-doubting person, so I was thinking of excuses of why she didn’t like me. Maybe I had been mean to her accidentally without noticing it? On the other hand, she thought I was rude and didn’t want to talk to her?
The whole “ignoring each other” thing went on

Show More