10 Stories From This Week That Prove Empathy Travels Farther Than Any Flight (May 25-31 Edition)

Empathy, kindness, and compassion have always been the quietest expressions of love and the people who still lead with them tend to carry happiness that outlasts almost everything else life throws at them. These 10 heartwarming stories from this week are proof that human connection and humanity are still very much alive.

• I’m a flight attendant and on Tuesday I had a passenger: an older woman, flying alone, clearly terrified of flying. I’ve seen it a thousand times.
  I sat with her for the first 20 minutes after takeoff, just talking about where she was going, about her grandkids, about the city we’d just left. By the time we hit cruising altitude she had loosened up enough to eat something. When we landed she grabbed my hand and said “thank you” in a way that was more than just the flight.
  2 hours later I got a message through the airline’s feedback system. It was from her daughter in Sydney who said her mother had been refusing to fly for 11 years since her husband died because he’d always held her hand on planes and she didn’t think she could do it without him.
  This was her first flight since the funeral. She made it. I didn’t know any of that when I sat down next to her. I just saw someone who needed someone to talk to.

Masha / Bright Side

• My parents live in Brazil and I live in Germany. I haven’t been home in 2 years because flights are expensive and life keeps getting in the way.
  My dad got diagnosed with early Parkinson’s in March. He didn’t tell me for 6 weeks because he didn’t want me to worry. My mom finally called me last Sunday and told me. I booked a flight that night for next week.
  My landlord found out somehow. I think through my roommate and knocked on my door and said he’d hold my room for two months at half rent so I could stay as long as I needed to. He’s not a warm man. He’s professional and fair and I’ve never had a conversation with him that lasted more than four minutes.
  I’ve been trying to figure out how to thank him and I can’t find the words. I’m flying out Thursday.

Bernardo / Bright Side

• On my flight, a man kept shoving his bag under my seat. I grabbed it and said I was going to open it. He screamed, “He stole my bag!” A lady ran over, panicking: “No. Don’t touch it!”
  Too late, the zipper tore. What fell onto my lap made the whole row gasp. A ring box. It popped open. Diamond ring.
  He went red, and the woman grabbed my arm and whispered, “That’s my son. He’s proposing when we land. His girlfriend is a few rows ahead.” His mom had been helping him hide it the whole flight.
  His girlfriend always digs through his bag for gum or her charger, so he kept pushing it under my seat. If she’d seen an open ring box, 3 years of saving and the whole surprise would have been gone in one second.
  His mom looked at me like she was about to pass out. He whispered, “Please close it and act like you saw nothing.” I closed it and said, “She’s going to cry.” His mom teared up right there.
  We talked the rest of the flight like old friends, his mom sharing stories about the girlfriend and how long she’d been waiting for this moment. At the gate he said, “I owe you one.” I said, “Just invite me to the wedding.” They did.

Nadia / Bright Side

• My best friend’s mom died on Monday. He lives in Madrid. I’m in Chicago. I found out when he texted me at 6pm my time, just “she’s gone” and nothing else.
  I booked a flight that night. Didn’t tell him. Showed up at his door with coffee from the place near his apartment that he’d shown me once three years ago when I visited.
  He opened the door and just stood there for a second. Then he said, “How are you here right now?” I said I had enough miles saved up. That’s not true. It cost me $800 which I didn’t really have.
  We didn’t do anything special. I just sat in his apartment while he dealt with paperwork and phone calls and relatives and all the administrative ugliness of losing a parent. Then I flew home.
  He texted me when I landed and said, “I don’t know how to thank you for that.” I told him he didn’t have to. I’ve known him since we were 9. That’s just what 19 years of friendship means.

Summer / Bright Side

• I volunteer at a refugee resettlement organization and this week we were helping a family get set up in their new apartment, which was completely empty, just walls. I put a call out in our volunteer group chat asking if anyone had spare furniture.
  Within 6 hours we had a full living room, two bed frames, a kitchen table, bedding, a toaster, towels, and kids’ books. One woman drove 2 hours each way to bring a couch. She’d never met this family. She just had a couch she wasn’t using.
  The dad, who speaks very little English, shook her hand for a long time when she arrived. She told me later she cried the whole drive home. The good kind she said. The kind where you feel like you did the one good thing that week.

Liam / Bright Side

• I run a small bakery, and this week a woman came in and asked if I could make a cake for Saturday for her daughter’s 18th birthday.
  She had a budget of 12 dollars. She was 16 dollars short of my cheapest cake. She knew that. She apologized before she even finished asking.
  I told her to come back Saturday morning. I made the cake. 18 candles, her daughter’s name, the works. When she came to pick it up, I told her it was 12 dollars.
  She looked at the cake and then at me, and I could see her doing the math. She said, “This isn’t a 12-dollar cake.” I said, “It is today.”
  Her daughter sent me a photo of her and the cake with all the candles lit. I usually just post cake pics on Instagram, but this time I asked permission from the girl to post it on my page.
  Her pic with cake and that beautiful smile got so many likes,views and comments and suddenly I started to have more customers. Kindness travels far and comes back. Be kind always.

Irina / Bright Side

• My son is 8 and has bad anxiety about school. This week his teacher paired him with a new kid who just moved from Mexico and speaks almost no English without telling me. She told my son his job was to make sure the new kid knew where everything was and never ate lunch alone.
  She told me about it at pickup. She said, “He needed to feel needed more than he needed another coping strategy.” My son came home every single day this week and talked about the new kid. What he’d shown him. What made him laugh.
  Yesterday he asked if the kid could come over on the weekend. I haven’t seen my son excited about school before. I’m glad that we have these kind of teachers.

Sophia / Bright Side

• I’m a nurse in a pediatric ward and we have a little girl who’s been with us for three weeks. She’s 6.
  Her mom is there every day without fail and she basically lives in that room, but her grandmother is back in New York, elderly. And the mom had been so consumed with doctors and insurance calls and just surviving the days that she hadn’t managed to set up a proper call between them.
  The girl asked me if I thought grandma knew she was okay. I asked the mom if she’d be alright with me trying to sort something out. She said yes and looked like she might collapse with relief.
  I found a way to do a video call during my break. The grandmother had a neighbor help her get set up on her end. It took about 40 minutes of tech trouble before we got it working.
  When the girl finally saw her grandmother’s face on the screen she just said, “Grandma I have a drawing to show you” and held it up immediately. Those minutes were the best part of my week.

Isabella / Bright Side

• I posted on a community board this week because my elderly neighbor (she’s 79), lives alone and mentioned she hadn’t been able to get to the pharmacy since her hip surgery 3 weeks ago and was running low on her blood pressure medication. I don’t drive. I was just putting it out there.
  Within an hour, a man I’d never met said he drives past that pharmacy on his way to work every morning and would pick it up on his way in and drop it at her door. He did it the next morning. Then he texted me and said he’d checked and she had two more refills due in the coming months and if I wanted him to just handle those too.
  I showed my neighbor the messages. She read them twice. Then she said, “People are still good.” She sounded surprised. I don’t think she should have been surprised. But she was right.

Rachel / Bright Side

• My uncle flew in this week just to drive my dad to his chemotherapy appointments because I couldn’t get time off work. He stayed 4 days and slept on our couch. Every morning he made my dad tea the way my dad likes it and drove him there and sat in the waiting room the whole time without complaint. When I thanked him he said, “He’s my brother.”

Noah / Bright Side

Empathy doesn’t need a direct flight. It just needs one person willing to show up. Read more stories like these here.