Kindness is Never Wasted

I read about a true story which had happened in 1892 (by the way, where were we?) at Stanford University, USA.

A 18 year old orphan, he was studying in this university.  In order to pay for his fees, he had worked several part time jobs.  One day, his classmate and him both came up with another idea to make ends meet.  They decided to host a musical concert in the campus.  They reached out to the great pianist Ignacy J Paderwski.  The great pianist’s manager demanded a guaranteed fee of $2,000 for the piano recital.  They then had the deal.  The two boys began to work to make the concert a success.  They started to promote this concert and selling the tickets even till the big day itself, but to their disappointment, the sales of the tickets was not successful.  Nevertheless, the performance of Paderewski was still carried out .  The poor boys managed to collect a total of $1,600, with all the effort made.

The two boys learned their good lesson that this was not a good idea at all, it was not as easy as they thought, but they had already promised to pay Paderewski the $2,000, so with great disappointment, they approached Paderewski and gave him the cash amount of $1,600.  At the same time, explained to him their plight.  They requested to defer the payment for the balance $400.

“No”, said Paderewski.  “This is not acceptable”.  The two boys boys were prepared to plead further, but to their astonishment, Paderewski added on “Take back your $1,600″.  “Go back and calculate how much you have incurred for this event, also settle your school fees first, whatever extra you have, will be my fee”.  The two boys were very surprised and touched “But we have promised….” “No, I can’t accept, how can I accept? Just listen to me, don’t be stubborn”.  The two boys thanked this great pianist profusely.

It may sound like a small act of kindness, especially for people who are financially stable. But it clearly marked out Paderewski as a great human being. Why should he help two people he did not even know?

We all come across situations like this in our lives. And most of us only think “If I help him, what would happen to me?” The truly great people think, “If I don’t help him, what will happen to him?”  They don’t do it expecting something in return. They do it because they feel it’s the right thing to do.

Paderewski later went on to become the Prime Minister of Poland. He was a great leader, but unfortunately when the World War began, Poland was ravaged. There were over 1.5 mil­lion people starving in his country, and insufficient fund to help the people.  Paderewski did not know where to turn for help. He reached out to the US Food and Relief Administration eventually. The person in charge was a man called Herbert Hoover, who later went on to become the US President from what I heard.  Hoover agreed to help and quickly shipped tons of food grains to feed the starving Polish people. A calamity was averted.

Paderewski was relieved.  He then went to meet Hoover and person­ally thanked him.   He was surprised with the reaction of Hoover, when Hoover said this “You shouldn’t be thanking me, Mr. Prime Minister. You may not remember this,  but several years ago, you helped two young men went through their darkest moment during their university days, for your information, I was one of them.”

This story is not a fictional one, it’s a true story (though may be slightly distorted). 

The moral of this story is : At times, we may not do the right things, or we may do silly things, or stupid things, but most importantly, we must do the kind things.   What goes around comes around.

My earlier post of kindness :

http://socyberty.com/issues/how-to-do-random-kind-of-kindness/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/a-heart-warming-encounter/