Going From Guarded To Gratified

A selfless act can sometimes look selfish at first glance

Good Turns most often hears about people who have done good turns for others. We more rarely talk to those who’ve been on the receiving end. So it was nice to hear the story of a woman who at first didn’t even realize that someone was doing her a good deed.

Jenna Wilson was eating alone at a Himalayan restaurant in Sonoma County, California, where she works as a massage therapist, when a good turn came her way that at first seemed anything but.

“It kind of cheered me up, that someone did something so sweet for me.”

“I had just gotten my hair done, and I was sitting by myself in a corner,” she recalled, “when the server told me, ‘The man who was sitting over there said he wanted to pay for that pretty girl’s meal.'”

Though she was flattered, she was also wary that a stranger might want something in return. “At first I said, ‘No way.’ I thought he was hitting on me, that he would want something from me. But the server said, ‘No, he already left.’ That really surprised me,” she told Good Turns.

“When I found out that he paid for my meal and just left,” she said, “I was so surprised. That seemed really unusual to me. I thought, Why? He didn’t get anything out of it, other than to feel good about it, and to know that I felt good about it.” But as we know, that’s often more than enough.

“I remember it kind of cheered me up, just knowing that someone would be so kind as to do that, that someone did something so sweet for me,” Wilson said. “It restores your faith in humanity.”

“It made me really happy, of course, too, that somebody would be so kind for no reason,” Wilson said. We feel the same way.

Posted September 15, 2017