The Shock Factor

So I have been up for a few hours in this day already. It wasn't because I couldn't get to sleep, but because I chose to get up at 6am and to leave by my dorm by 7. Why would any college student wake up that early, especially when their morning class was canceled and had only one class today, which is at 11.
So why did I get up? Because I had something to do. From 7:30am to 9am, I was passing out free cereal to any student or faculty member that passed by. I and some others were just standing outside the library saying "Free Cereal!" and a lot replied back with a shake of the head or a simple no. The thing that really surprised me was that so many people were not willing to take the cereal. At times it felt as if we were convincing people that it was okay to take it.
Another shocking factor was the look of surprise on people's faces. Many kept asking, "Why are you doing this? Are you raising money or doing this for some cause?" And we would reply, "We are doing this because we want to give out free cereal."
The looks that they gave were shocking at times, because some would be so happy to receive cereal and then others would just give us a look that did not look positive to say the least.
So my question for this entry of this blog is this:
Why is it so shocking to be positive in the morning and giving away something free?
My answer is simple, yet can also be very hard to grasp. First off, we are not used to people being positive, especially in the morning. So when we see people who are actually happy, it makes us feel uncomfortable since we live in such a cynical world. Being positive is no longer a social norm, which is really sad. The second point is that we are not used to things being free. Everything has a catch to it and if someone says free, we automatically think, "What's the catch?" We were passing things out for free, yes we were apart of an organization, but we weren't really saying this is who were are. We were just doing a kind deed for people and that's all.
The shock factor was from the people who organized the whole idea of passing out free food. The shock factor was from the people who passed out the free food. The shock factor is also from whatever good deed someone did because of the kind deed that was done for them. It is sort of like the pay-it-forward idea.
So, a shock factor doesn't have to be this big event or some type of revolution, it can simply be from being kind to a person. This is so shocking, because who is kind anymore? Maybe that can be a new revolutionary idea to think about. It is so simple yet it is so hard to follow through.