The true price of milk

Howard Kelly is considered to be the father of gynaecology. He is also one of the "Big Four" professors who founded the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

Howard wasn't always a renowned physician though - once upon a time, he was a struggling student who had to travel to different towns, selling goods door to door, just to pay his fees.

There was a day when he was starving and couldn't afford a meal. He decided to ask for something to eat at the next house he visited, otherwise he was pretty sure he would pass out on the sidewalk before long. The next door he knocked on was answered by a beautiful girl, and Howard momentarily lost his nerve. Instead of begging for food, he simply asked for a glass of water.

The girl could see that the poor guy needed more than water, but she didn't have any food, so she gave him a glass of milk instead. Howard gulped it down and immediately felt better, but he still felt a need to maintain some pride. "How much do I owe you?", he asked the girl. She smiled and said, "My mother taught me never to take payment for kindness, so you owe me nothing".

Many years later, Howard was a renowned gynaecologist, healing women of all manner of seemingly untreatable illnesses and charging hefty fees for his much needed services.

One day, a woman was brought to him. Local doctors had tried and failed to treat her, and had sent her to the big city for specialists to "study her condition" while she waited to die. His colleagues took one look at the lady and declared that she would be "dead by midnight", but Howard Kelly had other ideas. He worked tirelessly to cure the poor lady, and after a month, sent her home fit and well.

After some time, the lady received her bill from the hospital. She trembled as she opened the envelope, knowing there was no way she could pay her bill without selling all her assets and borrowing some money too. To her surprise, the invoice had one sentence written on it:

"Paid in full with a glass of milk". My people, we talk a lot about altruism, but the truth is that kindness is often an investment. An investment that can pay you back twice. First, it rewards you with a nice warm feeling at the moment you perform a kind act, and then sometimes, it comes back to reward you again at a future date, when you are most in need of kindness yourself.

Every time I get to the toll booth on the Tema motorway, I pay my own toll, as well as that of the car behind mine. I do this because once upon a time, someone did this for me.

I appreciated it so much that I am on a lifelong crusade to keep doing this every time I use the motorway, in the hope that one day, the car behind me will belong to the kind stranger who once paid my toll. I only pray that on that day, he or she will also have no change on her, like I did on the day they paid for me.

My friends, if you want to feel good today, then do something kind for a stranger. Pick someone you have never met, and make them remember this day forever. It doesn't even have to involve money. Just writing "you are an amazing person" on a post-it note and sticking it on a random car's windscreen, will put a smile on a stranger's face for the whole day.

But if you want to feel good for the rest of your life, then beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

My name is Kojo Yankson, and the surest investment I can recommend is a random act of kindness. Expect no reward, and you're bound to get one.