The blue umbrella a stranger gave me on a rainy Manhattan night.

Last night I was walking home in Manhattan when the sky opened up. Not a light drizzle. A real downpour, the kind where rain hits the sidewalk so hard it bounces back up at your ankles. I had no umbrella. Within a minute I was soaked through.

I watched people stream past me, each tucked safely under their own umbrella, and felt that particular kind of foolishness you feel when you have lived in New York long enough to know better. Cold water ran down my neck and through my jacket. I walked faster, head down, already bargaining with the universe about not getting sick.

Then something happened that stopped me.

A man was about to enter his apartment building. He had a big blue umbrella. He paused, looked at me, and said: “Why don’t you take my umbrella? I’ve reached my building, so I don’t need it anymore.”

He was completely serious. He was not asking me to share it for half a block. He was giving it to me.

I thanked him, took the umbrella, and watched him disappear through his front door. Then I kept walking, now dry, holding a stranger’s blue umbrella.

That moment stayed with me the rest of the walk home. I have written before about the taxi drivers in various cities who have refused to take my money over the years. There is something about these small, unsolicited acts of generosity that carries more weight than grand gestures. Nobody was watching this man. No audience, no recognition. He saw a person getting drenched in the rain and decided to do something about it.

I still have the blue umbrella. Every time I reach for it, I think about how charitable actions, even small and unwitnessed ones, make the world genuinely better for someone who needs it. I think about how I should give more to others. And I think about how kindness, more than almost anything else, is real power.

Happy Thanksgiving.