impact – The Life and Times of Ben Weinberg

There are a few things in life that are non-negotiable. One of those things is the effort taken to be kind. It does not take much to do and while it can be difficult to be kind all the time, it doesn’t cost anything, and the effort is always worth it. Some of the issues that we experience in our world is due to a lack of kindness in our daily interactions. If more people tried to be kind towards one another, I could guarantee that a lot of conflict, irritation, and resentment would go away.

Someone who is always kind to anyone regardless of who they are or what they can or cannot do for the person will stand out even more. The smallest gestures can make all the difference in another person’s day or week. As the popular saying goes, “It costs nothing to be kind.” I would add on to that saying but highlighting that, “It costs nothing to be kind, but it means everything to be kind.” When you do kind gestures and use kind words, not only will it reflect well on you, but it will also endear you to the people around you.

When we are living in a day and age of rapid technological, social, and political change, it is even more important to stay true to the morals and values that make people trust, believe, and have faith in one another. Showing kindness and being a kind person helps make the world a little bit better in a measurable way. I have written before about the ripple effect and how your kind gesture is likely to lead to another kind gesture from the person you impact. I’ll give an example to highlight just exactly what I mean.

We open and close doors multiple times a day and usually we are in a public place when we must do this. It takes approximately three to five seconds to hold the door open for the next person. You may not think it’s a kind gesture, but I would like you to imagine that the person behind you has a bag or two bags in their hand. Maybe, they also have their dog with them, or they are on a cell phone call. Thus, when you put it like that, the simple gesture of opening the door for them so they don’t have to use their arms if they’re full or if they’re busy with another urgent task can make all the difference.

You will have to exert a little bit of physical effort to hold that door open to a complete stranger but think about if they automatically would not hold the door open for you when you are in need. It would not feel that good to you if you were the person occupied with other items or tasks and the person before you did not hold the door open for you when you need that. When it comes to kindness, we do have to think about being in someone else’s shoes and how a lack of kindness can make our day worse and not better.

I do believe that when you do a kind gesture for someone, they will likely then reciprocate by following that learned behavior. It’s similar to what we do when we are children, and someone offers us a piece of gum, or a candy and we do that to someone else as we learn that “sharing is caring.” You can have that kind of impact each day by holding the door open for someone reminding them that they themselves can do that same small act of kindness for the next time when the opportunity presents itself.

In the Post-COVID era where we were instructed to stay away from each other to prevent the pandemic from spreading, I think it’s not even more important to get back to looking out for each other in the opposite way by looking out for one another even more after a hard period of isolation, distress, and uncertainty. The world remains in a tumultuous and difficult period still but now we have the chance to make life a little easier by being kind because it is the right thing to do as we are taught since we are children.

Whether it is holding that proverbial door open or asking how someone is really doing and hearing them out if they are not doing well, or remembering to check in with friends and family from time to time and asking if they need help with anything, especially if you have elder family members in need. We truly show our humanity when we look out for one another, and it is the singular characteristic for which we will be remembered for or not remembered for when we are gone from this Earth.

While we would like to think we were remembered for having a prestigious job or for all the things we did for our own personal gain or benefit, or for what kind of impact we had in the world, which are not bad things to be remembered for, I do think it is better to be remembered as a kind person firstly. I believe it is best for others who will remember you to focus most on if you were the kind of person who endeared himself or herself to others in a selfless manner without expectation of a return for having done so.

You can bet that if you are a kind person, people who will remember you when you’re gone will focus on that quality more than anything else. If you have ignored being kind to others or have not focused on it as a character trait, it is never too late to instill more kindness to people in your life. Every effort matters and kindness always matters. If you can change your ways to a better person, being a kind person is a trait that will always be remembered long after you’re gone. Remember that people are struggling out there and the simplest kind gesture of asking how a person is doing, opening the door for someone else, and checking in on people to help them if they are in need is the greatest gift to share in this world.

When many of us think about versus chance, the English expression, “A roll of the dice” comes to mind. When you are faced with two or more choices and you must act, it’s like rolling the dice and hoping to get lucky in a table game at a casino. There is always going to be a risk involved when rolling the dice or making the choice in life as there is when it comes to choosing one of two possible decision or even one of multiple decisions.

Life involves a lot of non-linear choices to make and that inevitably involves taking chances on it. There’s no bigger example for me of taking a chance metaphorically than the rolling of a dice like at a craps table. Dice can have multiple choices on them or two choices only, one of which that it will land on, the other it will miss, but there is only one outcome without any alternative once the dice stops rolling.

Many of our day-to-day decisions involve choosing, taking that action, and going in one and only direction after the decision is made like the dice being rolled. While we would like to choose both options to see where they lead us, the chances of doing so are unrealistic and impossible. Like the dice that we roll, in life, we only can choose one of two or more possibilities. Dice can have more than two choices and while your standard dice has six sides to it, life usually has us choose between more than a few options as well with only one possible choice being the outcome to follow.

The metaphor of rolling the dice is apt when you consider that for the average person, choice overload leads to indecision or no decision at all. The most stressful part of a person’s day is not making the choice itself but rather when they are not given a choice or if they have too many choices to choose from. There is real fear and anxiety in people thinking they made the wrong decision and if they have multiple choices, the likelihood of feeling stress goes up because the choice is not simplified, and they must weigh different outcomes rather than just two or a few of them.

When the choices we have in front of us are two or four or six, we suffer less from ‘analysis paralysis’ or from indecision itself. While you can still second guess yourself later, if you are still able to think your decisions through and make an educated guess or choice, you won’t feel as stressed or anxious. I think that’s why the adage of ‘flipping a coin’ or ‘rolling the dice’ appeals to people because sometimes, the randomness and leaving it up to chance is better than putting actual effort into our decisions.

That’s partly why gambling is such an intrinsic part of most cultures in that you can still act by flipping the coin, rolling the dice, pulling the lever, but you don’t have any real choice to make because you’re leaving the choice up to someone else like an algorithm, a card dealer, or fate itself. People like autonomy over their decisions but they also enjoy leaving things out of their hands and letting ‘fate’ decide what happens next.

Of course, ‘fate’ usually has its outside influence on the choice that is made whether that’s the wind gust blowing the coin on a different side you expected, the casino letting the algorithm or computer decide who wins or who loses, or more generally, the environment around you that has an impact on the outcome. Fate itself is not without its own influence on the outcome so if you think that there is anything in this world that is truly impartial or just unbiased to the core, I tend to disagree and believe that whether it’s leaving things up to ‘chance’ or ‘fate’ itself, nothing is ever truly random in its consequence and that no outcome is without its own chance of interference.

You may have rolled the dice, pulled the lever, tossed the coin, picked a card from a deck, but there are other factors at play that keep ‘fate’ from being truly blind in its outcome. Even when leaving things up to ‘chance’, you still acted up until that point and the fact that you put yourself in that situation means the outcome itself afterwards even if you call it ‘fate’ was a consequence of your actions only but it is rather true instead that the immediate environment, the people around you, and a number of other external factors that had an influence on the ‘fate’ of that outcome.

Rolling dice, playing cards, and gambling give people a thrill because your action can lead to random winnings or losings but that’s basically the illusion of it all. Fate in life like a rolling of the dice may seem random but there are outside factors in place that may seem like it was ‘destiny’, ‘fate’ or ‘random luck’ but involved several actions, decisions, beliefs that led to the present moment.

Instead of trusting in ‘fate’ to guide us or for our choices to always be led to pure ‘chance’, we lose the power of our choices and the education of our decisions. We cannot always leave things to ‘chance’ and must look beyond picking randomly or choosing out of a hat to guide us in life. While I disagree with taking on too many choices or nitpicking every decision you make, you must always be thinking things through, educating yourself, and being willing to learn from your mistakes.

Choices inevitably cause consequences, both good and bad, and we cannot foresee where our choices may lead. However, if we leave too much up to ‘fate’ or ‘luck’ as we call it, then we will never really mature or grow as people. People should do their best to have autonomy over their decisions and to not take them lightly. Yes, it can be fun to roll a dice or flip a coin to make our choices, but life is too serious to be gambling on our choices like that. Rolling the dice may seem like an easy way to go through life like picking random numbers out of a hat but that’s not how the real-world works. When we evaluate our choices, think through decisions that have big consequences, and trust in our believes to guide us through the consequences of those decisions, we will be better off as individuals for having taken control of our lives rather than leave it all up to ‘chance.’