There is a man I met not too long ago in his-mid-to-late-60s who works with leather. Terrell is his name. I called him on the referral of another friend and asked if he could help me with some work I needed done. He said yes and so I drove to his workshop-behind-his-house and we chatted for a while. He did awesome work, had the item finished the next day, and charged a reasonble $25 for what he had done.
Yesterday, I called with another similar project, which he agreed to do, and today, when I called to see if I could pick the item up, I asked if the charge would be similar, so that I could write out the check. He replied that there was no charge.
"This is most unexpected and so nice! What is this, be nice to new friends day"? He said something to the effect of, 'You have been nice to me, so I want to be nice to you.'
When someone does something like this, it is such a shock. I think in years-gone-by, it was more common. I like this guy – not because he did the work for free, but because he felt like being generous and then he did it.
This made my day and helped me feel like there was some good in the common man.
I want to be more like this! I want you to be more like this too. You could tell that Terrell felt good doing it – so it seems a win-win both for the give and the receiver.