Right after graduation, I moved to a new city and a new country for my job: Berlin. I was renting independently for the first time. The apartment was “Kaltmiete” — bare walls and empty rooms — so I had to furnish everything from scratch.
I saw someone posting online to give away a bookshelf and reached out. She invited me to her apartment, walked me to the kitchen, opened the cupboards and said, “Take what you need.” She told me that when she had arrived in Berlin from Hungary with two suitcases eight years earlier, someone had done the same for her. She wanted to pass that kindness on. Before I left, she handed me a carpet. “It makes a new place feel like home,” she said.
I never used the carpet, but I have kept it to this day as a reminder to pass kindness on.
