【轻阅读，看世界】What is the single most underrated trait a person can have?

铅笔英语，每晚睡前故事。

看世界人生百态，品人间真情冷暖。

多一种语言，多一个纬度，多一段故事。

A woman has had the worst day ever.

She’s got allergies, her kid is being a brat and doing horrendously at school, her husband is out of town for the week, she got a speeding ticket on her way to work, which she was still late for anyway, her big deal fell through, and now her boss is calling her into his office to have a word with her.

As she sits down, she braces for the worst. She starts wondering how she’s going to break the news that she’s been fired when she gets home. Then she starts wondering about how many weeks the family can last before their savings are spent. She waits for thunder and fury. But it never comes.

“Kate, what’s wrong?” her boss asks. “You’ve been out of sorts lately and I’m worried about you.”

She’s stunned. She was not expecting compassion.

Later, Kate is getting dinner at a restaurant with her family. The appetizers never came and now the main dishes are late. After her day, she’s ravenous and at the end of her rope. The waiter appears, arms full of trays and dishes. And just as he’s setting down her sweet and sour soup, he stumbles, dropping everything, and sending food all over her.

He’s apologizing like crazy.

Kate is livid. She has ninety-nine percent of a mind to go ballistic, to let him have it, to rip into this stupid boy who just capped off the day from hell. But as she readies to tear into him, she sees the look on his face, and remembers her own expression facing her boss.

And she stops. “It’s alright. You’re not hurt, are you?”

Kate understood then the importance of kindness, in extending that little bit of compassion when one could otherwise easily, and perhaps even with social approval, exercise their cruelty.