Annoyed College Student Learns Powerful Lesson From Foreign Classmate.

Especially in the age of social media, it’s become easier for us to become super self-involved.

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After all, when you hop on Twitter and Instagram, the entire experience is usually predicated on sharing a curated version of you: your dog, your lunch, your day-to-day life. And that level of self-involvement plus increasingly divisive times can be a recipe for disaster. But as one college student just learned, we always have to remember to step outside of ourselves to ensure that we are extending kindness and compassion to those around us.

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Each day for his management class, Thomas McFall walks to the same seat and sits down, but before he can, he always has to tell his classmate to move his books from his chair. After a few weeks of this, he immediately assumed that this student was just being inconsiderate.

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As you can guess from his tone, he’s initially put off by the student. Referring to a fellow human being as “some foreign guy” isn’t exactly a tenet of Compassion 101. Still, he likes his seat and wants to stay there.

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Clearly, this student is nothing but friendly to Thomas every day when he arrives.

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But Thomas? He’s annoyed. He’s frustrated about having the same conversation every day.

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One fateful day, however, running a few minutes late to class gave him an important reality check. He heard his classmate say something that made him stop in his tracks.

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This entire time, he was saving Thomas’s seat because aside from a few irritated remarks about moving his things, Thomas gave him high fives and was pleasant to him. It’s a feeling the student hasn’t known from many others.

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At this point, Thomas immediately sees the error of his ways.

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He wants to make up for all the time he wasted being frustrated with him by inviting him to lunch so they can have a proper conversation.

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He learned that the student had moved to the U.S. from the Middle East to pursue an education while working full-time. He sends all his spare money back home.

“Not every American is nice to me like you are, Tom,” he said. It broke Thomas’ heart: This man who works incredibly hard in a country where hardly anyone speaks his native language is often treated as if he is inherently lesser than those around him.

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Needless to say, Thomas learned a powerful lesson in tolerance, compassion, and empathy that day. We’re all human and everyone deserves to be treated with respect, whether you talk to that person every day or you’re just passing them on the street.

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We’re confident that this lesson will positively impact every conversation Thomas has with someone who seems different from him moving forward.

Be sure to share this story with the people you love to remind them that everyone deserves compassion.