The Muslim Lady At The Coffee Shop

Daily Blog #328

My dad once told me something that would forever stick with me. He recited a quote by Minor Meyers Jr. It went “Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.”

It’s sad that we live in a world filled with so much hate. A world where we sometimes value our belongings more than the human life that is around us. A world where we fear others based on the clothes that they wear, the color of their skin, or accent that they speak with. It’s sad that a Muslim lady tears up from a random act of kindness that most of us would take for granted. All because she couldn’t believe that somebody would do something nice for her.

I start each of my mornings out at 5 am by reading and writing at a coffee shop close to where I work. Most days that I am there, there is this nice little Muslim lady who comes in, sits down at the table across from me, and does the same exact thing that I do – reads and writes.

We have exchanged a few hellos in the past, and one time she even came up to me to ask what a high schooler like myself was doing reading at writing at a coffee shop at five in the morning. Flattered by calling me a high schooler, I told her about myself and the things that I write about. She smiled, said good on me, and told me to keep writing.

That day I took notice of how the barista always knew her order before she was able to give it to them. So the following morning, I got to the coffee shop before she did, asked the barista for her order, and told him that I was going to pay for it but that I didn’t want her to know who it came from.

She came in, set her books down on the table across from me, said hello, and went up to go and buy her coffee. When she got up there her coffee was ready, and it was already paid for.

She looked around the room in disbelief, asked the barista why she didn’t have to pay. True to his word, he told her that somebody else bought it for her but that he couldn’t say who it came from no matter how much she pleaded with him.

She walked over, sat across from me in her normal spot, smiled, and wiped tears of gratitude from her face with a tissue she pulled from her bag. She never asked me if I saw who paid for her drink, so I didn’t say anything. And to be honest, it didn’t matter who. I simply smiled back at her and kept reading.

I originally wasn’t going to write about this because I didn’t want any amount of admiration or attention. But a week later, the barista told me how their conversation went the day that I paid for the lady’s coffee. He told me that the reason she started to cry was because she simply couldn’t believe that somebody in the suburbs of Minneapolis would buy her, a Muslim lady, a cup of coffee.

The day that all of this took place I told my mom the story, and she had the same response. She said that the Muslim lady was probably shocked that somebody would do something nice for her in “those parts” of the city. I just didn’t believe it when my mom told me because I didn’t think of it as something out of the ordinary. Obviously, I was wrong.

That was the reason behind the lady’s tears. She couldn’t believe that there was a person in her community who would spend an extra $3 on a cup of coffee for her. The only thing is, I wasn’t going out of my way at all. I was doing something that felt right, and I was listening to my heart. Nothing more.

The point of this isn’t to boast about how awesome I am, or about how I only capable of doing good, because that would be a lie. The point of this is to encourage you and to push you to go and do something that will make a positive impact in somebody else’s life. Even something that you think of as small can make a long and lasting impact in the lives of others. You just never know whose day you might make in a time where they need it the most.

So go out of your way, and make it your mission to brighten up somebody else’s day.

Michael Bonnell

3/24/2019

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