With the slew of gloomy news that we've been getting of late with businesses closing, fights in public and the rising cost of living, it's always refreshing to have a random act of kindness come your way.
Hoping to encourage all to show some love to others, one TikTok user, who goes by the username @Snezams, uploaded a video of himself helping a stranger.
The TikTok clip, which was uploaded on July 14, showed footage from presumably the dashboard camera of that man's vehicle.
[embed]https://www.tiktok.com/@snezams/video/7120222223905918210?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1[/embed]
At the start of the two-minute video, the man could be seen stopping his car at a bus stop along Paya Lebar Road.
The car's back camera shows a cardboard collector painstakingly and slowly walking his bicycle along the road while balancing numerous bags and folded cardboards atop it.
In the video captions, the TikTok user said that "I am grateful today. I was given a chance to do something I always wanted".
He got out of the car, approached the cardboard collector and said in the video captions: "It's [going to] rain. Please let me help you. I would be really honoured."
After the cardboard collector agreed, the TikTok user helped him to unload the piles of cardboard from his bike so that he could seek shelter from the impending rain.
A few seconds later, another person could be seen running to assist them in unloading the items from the cardboard collector's bicycle.
At the end of the video, the TikTok user said that he did not post the video to show everyone his act of kindness and instead, he hopes it would serve as a message.
"You won't know the person you help might be at the lowest point of his or her life where they got no one to turn to," he said.
The video has since been shared on other social media platforms and many netizens flocked to the comments section to sing praises.
Some said that what the man did was admirable and many can learn from his actions while another netizen also reminded others that the cardboard collector could have been someone's father or grandfather.
There was also one netizen who said she was moved to tears by the video.
However, there were negative comments as well with one netizen hinting that the TikTok user was just trying to show off.
But others were quick to rebut him, with one saying that the "video was meant to inspire, not invoke feelings of envy".
Last March, a student from Outram Secondary School went the extra mile to help a wheelchair-bound elderly man who got lost while looking for the community centre to book a date for his Covid-19 vaccination.
melissateo@asiaone.com