Friday, April 12, 2019

Kruising Into The Weekend

Winding down week two in the A-Z Challenge and I'm still here. And it's Friday and my teacher daughter is on spring break next week so whoohoo! I think I'm as excited as she is not to be getting up before the crack of dawn for a solid week. Cheers to the weekend and sleeping past 5 AM!

I don't have a lot of time to blog, and if I'd been better organized I'd have written these A-Z posts weeks ago.  I probably didn't have time then either so here we are crawling into the weekend with one of the harder letters in the alphabet challenge.

I press on...

K is for Kindness

Not just the random unexpected kind either, but ordinary everyday kindness. Who doesn't feel delight at ordinary everyday kindness in the year 2019? I think this used to be what we called good manners, but now we call them 'acts'. 

Holding a door open for the person behind you, letting someone jump in line who has just a handful of groceries to purchase, picking up trash we didn't drop, returning the shopping cart, a baked treat for the new neighbor, going out of our way a little to help someone who needs helping, not saying everything you think. Saying good morning-thank you-you're welcome-I'm sorry. 

Kindness extended in even the simplest of ways lifts the spirit of both the giver and the receiver.

Then there are the random unexpected acts of kindness that come our way. The theme for my A-Z challenge this year was born out of one of these unexpected acts. Three months later and that small big act continues to delight me every single day.

Early in January I wrote about my word for this year. Someone read what I wrote and they acted on it. Two weeks later I had a package in the mail and I am still not over it. Every day I put that bracelet on my arm and every day I feel that same sense of delight all over again.

And now I've written two blog posts about it and it's only April.

Sometimes it feels a little obvious, trite, cliche to write about kindness. We're bombarded now with t-shirts, slogans, social media hashtags urging us to be kind but like most things that matter in this world, things that make a real difference in peoples lives, it's the doing as opposed to the 'talking about doing' that creates change.

Can kindness change the world?

In a word yes.
Our little corner of it anyway. 

4 comments:

  1. Joyce, I love doing those acts of kindness you listed. It really is so simple. Have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy sleeping in!

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  2. I love that idea of kindness being "not saying everything you think"-- perfect!

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  3. Oh my, how I agree. If only we could stop the hate and start being kind to one another!! Amen!! Amen!

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  4. I love all you have said to describe (and suggest acts of) kindness. May we all behave better and set an inspiring example to others, especially the unhappy ones who cross our paths.

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