Lesson 195. Pick up somebody's pen.

I'm sitting on the sixth floor and my head hurts. I do this dreadful thing where I start to think about dinner or how to solve everyone else's relationship problems and start staring vacantly but probably quite intensely in a certain direction, and unfortunately this has led to me making eye contact with the same boy three desks away at least four times. Sorry, he has nothing to do with the rest of this post; we didn't fall in love or figure out we were twins that were separated at birth or anything of that nature, I just had to tell you because when I feel uncomfortable I have to verbalise/share my discomfort. It's not always the best thing in the world. Oh heavens, he just smiled at me when he walked past like he thinks I'm deliberately looking at him, which I am very, very much not. This situation is growing more disastrous by the minute. Welcome to what is probably the most entertaining part of today and the story that I will most likely tell my flatmates at the end of the day when I arrive home. I apologise for the completely irrelevant anecdote once again, It's exam time and I'm probably procrastinating a little. I'm drawing out this post so that I have to spend a few less minutes writing about the political theoretical lenses through which we see the world and I can spend a few more minutes pretending that none of that exists while I write to you. 

If you're in study season as I am, and you have a splitting headache like I do (although I think it's mostly due to the fact that I tied my bow on my head too tight this morning) you're probably feeling a little over it. I've found myself slipping into bad habits over the last few days, like seeing that the dishwasher is empty and leaving it to empty itself (i.e. I'm so stressed someone else will do it) or being in too much of a rush to hold the door for a stranger. It's so easy to get caught up and forget to do the small things that make the world a little brighter for everyone else in it. I dropped a pen earlier today and someone picked it up for me, and it reminded me that at the busiest or most stressful of times, we often neglect to do the little things that really matter to other people. Something in us takes over and we stop being kind to other people even though we aren't even really taking the time to be kind to ourselves. Make the effort simply because it makes a difference. Take a split second out of your stressed out schedule to do something for someone that inconveniences you. All it took was a moment of remembering that we're all still human, a instant of connection in which a stranger reached out with the most basic of my needs, but it mattered in that moment and it matters now because it made me realise the importance of making small sacrifices for others.

Pick up somebody's pen.