Member-only story
Psychology
How To Be Remembered Forever
For five years, I took the 6 a.m. Express Bus from Wahiawa to Honolulu to go to school.
Wahiawa is a plantation town surrounded by military bases. The soundtrack of my childhood? Machine guns and helicopters. Traveling from “Apocalypse Now” to “Punahou School” and back took 3 hours a day.
I swore never to commute when I grew up.
But there was one life-altering moment that changed the misery of riding ‘Da Bus’ into a joy for me.
Every few months we’d get a new bus driver. This driver was nothing special. He was in his late 20s, skinny, and wore aviators. He looked like every other dude in the ’70s, with a beard and shag haircut.
One day I was running late, and I was screwed. There was no way I’d get to school in time. Seeing no one standing at the bus stop, the bus driver SLOWED DOWN to look up my street. He saw me sprinting toward him and waited.
This small act of kindness shook me to my core. It was pure generosity on his part, as he had nothing to gain. In that moment he convinced me that I had intrinsic worth and I was worthy of generosity, for no other reason than I existed. I try to pay forward his gift to me, and I will carry his memory to my grave.
Teach someone that they are worthy of kindness just for being human, and you too will be unforgettable.
