I wonder what this world would be like if we had only one responsibility and duty ~ Be Kind.
Kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous and considerate.
Have you ever taken a moment to be kind?
I wonder if those two villains (father and son) with rifles who took the lives of 16 Jews in Australia and injured 40 others recently ever thought about being kind to anyone?
And what of the killer who murdered Hollywood Director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele in Los Angeles; I wonder if that slayer knew anything of ‘kindness’?
Are headlines of maim and murder preferred to ‘acts of kindness’?
Mahatma Ghandi thought of a better method to changing one’s society when he said, ‘In a gentle way, you can shake the world.’ He believed in a ‘non-violent’ approach to shaping the politics of the world.
President Franklin Roosevelt, too, had a plan to distribute wealth; “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.”
As a nation, I wonder to myself, if we are meeting that challenge of Roosevelt today.
Last week, I stopped to get a simple coffee and pastry at the Lighthouse Coffee trailer near St. James. As I stood in line with about four other people, my good friend Atiff arrived at the end of this line and said softly to Maddy, the server, that he would treat all the customers at the coffee trailer on this day.
A simple act of kindness that brought smiles to all parties present.
And I thought of a sentence from Robert Louis Stevenson: “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” My good friend Atiff is always planting good seeds of that aspect of kindness in practice.
From that observance of kind acts, one has to believe there is more good in the world than not. Perhaps those two examples of villains who chose violence instead of kindness never once learned that lesson of helping others.
The French Quaker Minister Stephen Grellet (1773-1855) shared with his flock this duty of kindness ~ “I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.“
On this walk through life, it is not difficult to be kind. A selfish mindset is not one that benefits our society. There are many people who need assistance in a number of different ways.
The homeless, the sick, the unemployed, the elderly, the neglected children, the addict, the mentally ill, the hungry and countless others.
It is not a difficult task to find and help someone in need. I pulled travel trailers to New Orleans in 2005 to help those who lost everything in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The damage created by the storm was devastating to those citizens who lived there.
Several local agencies and individuals help to feed the poor in Washington County.
The Community Free Clinic, 249 Mill St., Hagerstown, Md., 21740 accepts donations to help treat those who are sick without medical insurance; Holly Place, 268 S. Potomac St., Hagerstown, Md., 21740 accepts donations to help keep and house the elderly sick.
There are many other helpful organizations that could benefit from your ‘kind’ donations in Washinton County to help out those citizens in need.
Everyone knows the story of Helen Keller, who became deaf and blind at 19 months old and was taught to communicate by Anne Sullivan and eventually learned to speak.
Keller left us with this kind thought:
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt by the heart.”
I’m thinking here that’s the reward of giving and showing kindness ~ it is felt by the heart of each giver.
And as I have been an avid reader of many fine writers and philosophers and other interesting people, I am most fond of the Dalai Lama’s words, who expressed his method of ‘kindness:’
“This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is your simple ‘kindness.’
So here is my favorite line ever written:
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.”
