Read Stories | Watch Videos


Discovering Smiles on a Rainy Day

What a joy it was to "discover" the smiles of 112 guests on a rainy Berkeley day!

We started our opening circle with stories of Andrea stopping her 60mph car to watch a stunning egret, Ashwin noticing generosity of a stranger who carefully fixed a fallen KK sign, Marilyn reflecting on parking garage kindness from the previous day, and Brittany evoking the story of the SF Chronicle's editor who infamously served as a floater.  Although we didn't know each other, generosity seemed to bind us all together.

As the day progressed, many more stories continued to unfold.  A woman visibly started shaking when she heard some KK stories ("I've got the chills", she said as her face turned red), a Berkeley research student who is studying Karma Kitchen tagged a guest on a random table, a hefty fellow left the restaurant with all smiles saying, "I'm coming back to volunteer", a man in his 70s brought a wow-90%-cocao chocolate as a gift for the volunteers, a Dad brought his young son to KK to teach him about generosity and had him consciously count the money he left in the envelope, a young woman took out a Smile Deck idea and decided to do it as her pay-it-forward "bonus", a school teacher kept saying that she wanted to bring her whole class here. 

And it didn't stop there.  As we all gathered for our 3PM feast, Jennifer and Thao had artfully arranged the peas on top of the rice in a formation that poignantly summed up the whole day -- a smile and a heart.

Thank you, all!

--NM on Nov 8, 2010




Share Your Own Story

If you have a Karma Kitchen story to share, please email us. We'd love to hear it, and spread the inspiration!