Small Acts Of Kindness

It costs nothing to be nice, and it might just save someone's life, reflects Dr Max

- Dr Max

A FEW YEARS ago I worked in a project for homeless people. There was one young man in his early twenties whom we had all been very worried about. He had absolutely no one in his life. His father was in prison for murder. His mother had been a drug addict. When he was six years old he was placed in foster care because teachers noticed that he was coming to school in dirty clothes. It transpired that he was being abused by his mother's boyfriend. He spent the rest of his childhood in and out of children's homes. His mother had died a few years previously of a drug overdose. He had no qualifications, nothing going for him in life. He started using drugs, got kicked out of the hostel he was living in and ended up homeless.