When the world sees a truly selfless action — especially a simple one — it affects the innate kindness in the human heart that is so rarely brought to the surface, we forget it is even there.

This is the case with the story of David Glen, the Penn State men’s hockey player who decided to sit out of three games this season to donate bone marrow to a woman with leukemia. A woman he does not know, nor will likely ever meet.

His action came partly out of circumstance — he was originally tested for bone marrow to see if he was a match for the mother of Drew Roper, a Penn State men’s lacrosse player. But when Glen was found to be a match for someone else — especially extraordinary considering that only one out of every 540 participants in a bone marrow drive are a match for someone else.

Glen’s action is not just something we as Penn Staters should pride ourselves on, but rather something we as students and human beings should aspire to do. And that doesn’t always mean donating bone marrow — it means doing the little things to help out someone just because it is a good thing to do, and it will help someone in desperate need.

It’s easy to look at this story and think Glen as an innately better person because he is a student athlete, but student athletes are human beings just as we all are. In the end, he’s still a college kid with obligations to both school and a team — a team which requires a large amount of commitment.

But Glen’s commitment goes beyond his team, his school and even himself. By donating his bone marrow he is helping a sick human being — just by sitting in a room for a couple of hours with a machine pumping his blood.

People often say that Penn State is only focused on football and everything else falls second. Glen’s donation shows that even an athlete can not only help someone besides himself, but that he can actually forgo some of his time on the ice to do so.

Glen’s modesty in his donation shines through all the public relations that have been done on his behalf, giving the impression that he did it for no other reason than to give someone a possible second chance.

We shouldn’t just say Glen is the best of us. We should try to learn a lesson from Glen — that the small things count, and we can all take a little time out to do them.