This aboriginal Australian used kindness and tea to trump the racism he overheard.
We've all been there: You're walking in a park or sitting at the movies, and you overhear someone saying something downright awful.
It might be something ridiculously sexist, astoundingly racist, or maybe just so generally insensitive that you can't help but be like...
GIF from "Sword in the Stone."
"Does that person know it's 2016?" you ask yourself in disbelief, grasping at the small sliver of faith in humanity left in your soul.
Last week, while eating lunch at a restaurant, Jarred Wall had a similar experience — except the awful thing said was about people like him.
Wall, an Australian who is aboriginal, overheard two women saying some terrible stuff about those in his community.
"Food was great but to our misfortune we inadvertently heard two elderly ladies, seated next to us, chatting about aboriginals," he wrote in a Facebook post. "The conversation was less than distasteful with words like assimilation thrown around willy nilly."
Though the women's comments stung, instead of unleashing a "tirade of abuse" in response to their words, Wall wrote that he decided to take the high road.
He bought a pot of tea for the women, and left a note on the receipt: "Enjoy the tea! Compliments of the 2 aboriginals sitting next to you on table 26. :)"
In other words, he fought their hate with a simple act of kindness.
Racism against aboriginal Australians may be a foreign concept for some Americans, but it's a very real thing in Australia.
Research suggests systemic racism against indigenous aboriginals is a "persistent but hidden phenomenon" in Australia, particularly in the workplace.
Similar to how Native Americans still face widespread oppression in the U.S., Australia's aboriginals face unique hardships in the predominantly white, westernized society in which they live.
A protest in favor of more protections for indigenous communities in Melbourne, Australia, in 2015. Photo by Chris Hopkins/Getty Images.
According to Annette Vickery of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service Co-operative, discrimination against Australia's aboriginals is "an invisible barrier wherever you go."
"It's on every front," she said, The Age reported. "From being included in a mainstream school to accessing normal services that everybody else accesses, to employment, personal loans, housing, private rentals, even accessing a restaurant."
"It is debilitating to people experiencing [racism], because it is like fighting shadows; always there, but hard to prove."
— Annette Vickery
Wall's experience, although unfortunate, isn't unique.
Wall ended his Facebook post with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which shows just how global the movement of communities fighting racial injustice has become.
Including #BlackLivesMatter — which originally launched as a means to end systemic racism in police forces across the U.S. — was a powerful way to highlight that racism isn't just an issue for a single community. Racism takes many forms across many communities around the world, and we should be unified in fighting them together.
#BlackLivesMatter has, at the very least, started a worldwide conversation about how we can get better at ensuring equality for all members of every society in every country and on every continent.
Photo by Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images.
For Wall, his simple act of generosity worked to counter racial bias on a much smaller scale — yet it's proving to have a global impact: His post has been shared nearly 3,000 times with users around the world.
Wall said he simply wants to motivate others to think twice about the impact of their words.
"They were elderly ladies, I didn't want to humiliate anyone or cause conflict," he told Mashable of the experience.
But "maybe these ladies will be a little wiser and think before they speak," he wrote in his post. "Hopefully there won't be a next time!"
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.