The kindness of strangers: when my cat died, my dance class pooled their money for a thoughtful gift
My dance school had a Christmas concert. I abstained from performing, having long ago put my dreams of dancing stardom to rest. But cheering on my reggaeton class as they popped, twerked and body-rolled their hearts out in a primary school hall was pure joy. Let’s normalise amateur dance concerts for adults.
For the unenlightened, reggaeton is a music genre and dance style that originated in Puerto Rico and Panama in the early 90s. A hot and sassy blend of reggae, salsa and Jamaican dancehall, it broke into mainstream culture around the mid-2000s. If you know Daddy Yankee’s 2004 banger, Gasolina, you know reggaeton, though not at its best.
This year my friend Spenser invited me to a reggaeton class. I’d done dancehall classes before but never reggaeton; it was love at first grind. The teacher was a delight, the random mix of students were welcoming and the routine was super fun. I hadn’t danced in a while and hadn’t realised how much I needed it.
Dancing has always helped me through rough times, and it’s been a rough time. I had a rough year in 2024, to be precise, and I know I’m not alone in this. Like most humans with living expenses and a soul, I’ve struggled. I’ve struggled with all of the death, I’ve struggled with all of the Trump, and I’ve struggled with the unrelenting financial sinkhole that is Covid-era late-stage capitalism.
As 2024 ended my mental health was shot, my debt was high and my sense of safety and belonging frayed. Also, my cat died.
Blanche Devereaux, feline, died suddenly, just shy of her 13th birthday. She was my weird little shadow, my non-ingestible antidepressant, my stage-five clinger. She whinged constantly and woke me regularly, and I miss her like the deserts miss the rain, which I’ve been led to believe is a lot. Let’s also normalise unashamedly mourning pets.
You can pry this last shred of optimism from my cold, dead jazz hands
Three things happened after Blanche’s death that restored some of my fractured faith in humanity: the staff at the vet hospital sent me a deeply personal condolence card, my beautiful new yoga teacher held my head and pressed my heart as I sobbed silently in corpse pose and my reggaeton teacher and classmates gave my yoga school money to cover a bunch of my classes.
I barely knew any of these people. Sure, sending condolence cards is likely to be standard vet hospital procedure, but they could just as easily not send them, just as my yoga teacher could have let me cry alone. And the people from my reggaeton class, which I had only attended for a few months and infrequently at best, went above and beyond any vague social protocol for a casual acquaintance’s deceased furball.
I believe in the kindness of strangers and the power of human connection, however fleeting. I’ve done enough fundraising and refugee advocacy to believe that most people want to and will help others when possible. I’ve written enough about living with grief and major depression to receive messages and offers of friendship from countless people I’ve never met. And I see random acts of kindness all the time.
I watched famed author and kind man and The Book Thief author Markus Zusak give a little girl with the world on her shoulders his beautiful leather-bound notebook from Italy because she said she liked it. I saw a woman in a cafe quietly pay a downtrodden stranger’s bill and leave before he could thank her. And, on Christmas Eve 2023 in my local grocery store, we customers banded together to fill delivery app orders for a distressed cashier who was alone on arguably the busiest night of the year. One of my neighbours even drove her home.
I could go on.
Despite the loathsome garbage monsters running and/or profiting from the world, the citizen bad actors trying to ruin it for everyone else, and the threats to Australia’s social cohesion, I continue to see the good in most of humanity. You can pry this last shred of optimism from my cold, dead jazz hands.
My reggaeton teacher and classmates are no longer strangers but treasured friends. Their warmth, silliness and the dopamine hit I get from dancing helped me through last year when I thought nothing would. I am grateful to have met them and for all random acts of kindness. Let’s bring Big, Kind Energy into this year.
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
