As a child, I was exposed to terrible stories of suffocating models being stuffed in suitcases and and gang shootings thirty minutes away from my home, which normally ended in the death of a few young thugs. These were terrible incidents, but I’d become unaffected by violence in my small Indiana neighborhood. When my family flew out to the serene town of Arlington, there was a definite change in the atmosphere. People were kind. The day after we moved into the house I live now, my neighbors ventured across the lawn to offer us their hospitality with a green bean casserole. This never happened back in Indiana.

I hadn’t even heard about any national violence—until the death of Caylee Anthony. Things only seemed to be getting worse. There was a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, a bombing during the Boston Marathon, the shooting of Michael Brown, which incited unrest in every aspect of America and continues to underlyingly affect affect everyday life, a shooting at an Orlando nightclub, and the list continues. Everyday there’s something new. I can’t turn the daily news on without hearing about some violent crime. I can’t scroll through Twitter without watching a video of a fight between two teenage gir over some irrelevant conflict. The constant exposure to violence instilled the Thomas Hobbes philosophy that people were self-centered individuals.

The stories I heard about children donating their birthday money to charities and people selflessly committing themselves to a community volunteer project seemed absent from my life.

But that was because I wasn’t looking for them. Like others, I was feeding off the negativity the media supported because the only news surfacing in everyday conversation was pessimistic, but as I peeled away the layers of my ignorance and became observant, kindness was there.

Kindness is the charismatic bleached-white-haired woman who comes into my produce stand, wearing her cougar jumpsuit with her furry black boots, rambling on about how thankful she is her husband survived a flesh-eating bacteria. Kindness is the restless driver in the packed school parking lot, letting another car go in front of them, despite having to work in less than thirty minutes. Kindness is explaining a foreign physics concept about the impact initial velocity has on distance to a struggling table partner. Kindness is volunteering your night to collect canned food for the local Santa Run.

My encouragement to everyone reading this article: don’t fixate on the bad. Sometimes, it’s hard. With all the news on violent crimes, religious and racial discrimination, there’s difficulty in seeing the bright light at the end of the tunnel. To be kind, you don’t need a large fund or spend hours upon hours at the local food bank. Merely smiling at someone in the hallway, opening the door for someone, paying someone a compliment, is an act of kindness. You can listen. You can grow your hair and later donate it. As a species, we have forgotten that a little goes a long way, so in the words of the Indian actor, Nishan Panwar, “The world is full of good people. If you can’t find one, then be one.”