Random Acts of Joy

When you're an extrovert spending weeks at a time alone in new cities, you have to rely on other people to help get you through.

Just walking down the city streets and feeling the hustle and bustle of a metropolitan area is a good start. Just seeing faces and watching other lives lived instills you with an appreciation. Even if it's a coconut juice vendor on the corner of the block that yells something at you in a language you don't speak, you're at least reminded that other people can see you.

Of everything I've seen, the sights that give me the most encouragement and develop a well-spring of goodness within me that I can pull from for days to come, are random acts of joy.

Random Act of Joy #1: There's three servers posted up in front of a beach-front cafe on a rainy day. Given the awful weather, nobody is making their way in to eat. One of them suddenly starts dancing, using the moisture on the mosaic tile to effectively moonwalk. Everyone laughs. Whether it actually gets people in the doors or not is beside the point.

Random Act of Joy #2: A group of five teenagers are sitting around a table outside of a bar on a Friday night. The bar is positioned in such a way that there's the bar on one side of a small alley street, and because alcohol laws don't exist here, there's tables of people crowded around either side of this small through-street. Taxis and Uber drivers have made their way down this street all night hoping that they'd time it right with a patron's departure. A garbage truck makes its way down the street to collect the bar's trash and one of the teenagers at the table of five jumps onto the foothold on the back of the garbage truck to pose for a selfie. Instead of the garbage collectors getting mad, they jump into the photos and suddenly there's a small selfie parade in our midst.

Random Act of Joy #3: I'm having a drink at a bar and a man makes his way through the bar giving out business cards for a new Gentleman's Club that opened up around the corner. I intentionally don't look his way because I'm not interested. The man is about to make his way out of the bar when my server grabs him and asks him to go drop a card at my table. I receive the card, thank the man for making his way over and the man departs the bar. My server looks up at me and just howls with laughter. Needless to say, I join in.

It's these small acts that get me through this trip. They provide a respite from my over-contemplative brain and, if even for just a moment, assuage any worries or fears and place me into the state I prefer to dwell: a state of laughter.