Try A Little Kindness

When we chose kindness as our word of the month for November, I remember thinking there would be lots to write about and the words would flow easily. After all, we Sisters are kind people and were raised by one of the kindest people ever – our mom Betty. But when it came time to sit down and start formulating what I was going to write, I kept getting stuck.

What’s the Plan Stan?

I love the concept of random acts of kindness and always feel incredibly uplifted when I am able to perform one. So why was I struggling so much to write about it? What I figured out is that writing about my good deeds feels like “blowing my own horn” and it doesn’t sit quite right with me. In my mind, this runs directly contrary to the philosophy behind random acts of kindness, which I understand to be doing things simply because you want to be kind, not because you expect praise or anything else in return for your actions.

The other piece I kept getting stuck on is the “random” part of random acts of kindness. I am a planner by nature. Just ask my husband who, after 47 years of marriage, has made peace with the fact that planning anything to the nth degree is my happy place. But planning and random don’t really fit together in my mind. Then I came across someone who wrote about struggling with this very same idea. He squared this contradiction for himself by deciding that he could be more intentional about acts of kindness without losing the random part. This made my planner heart sing! I was starting to see some possibilities.

Universal Kindness

I believe the universe provides (I am the woo-woo sister after all) and she did just that in big way when I found out November 13th was World Kindness Day. This led me to a wonderful blog post about World Kindness Day on the Fabulous Boomer Sisters blog http://www.fabulousboomersisters.com entitled “25 Acts of Kindness,” which in turn led me to the website of the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. http://randomactsofkindness.org

I don’t know about you, but I had no idea there was a foundation for random acts of kindness and was even more surprised when I found out I could become a RAKtivist, short for Random Acts of Kindness Activist! RAKtivists are kindness ambassadors who are helping to “make kindness the norm.” This was right up my alley.

As of this writing I am waiting and hoping that my application will be approved so that I can join the over 40,000 other RAKtivists in 89 countries around the world. As a kid, growing up in the 60s and 70s watching young people in peace marches and “burn the bra” demonstrations on TV, the thought of becoming an activist for anything at my age – well it just makes me smile.

And those of you who follow our blog know I love a good quote, and so when I dove into the RAK Foundation website and found a section devoted just to quotes about kindness I knew I was in the right place.

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Be Kind and Carry On

So here we are, with a post that I thought would talk about kind things I have done, that turns out to be about being intentional about doing acts of kindness while working towards the goal of making kindness the norm. But what does this mean exactly for me? Well, after sifting through the many great ideas on the RAK Foundation website I’ve found a few things that really speak to me.

• Love Letters – in today’s electronic world of communication, there is something so special about receiving things that are handwritten. I love writing letters, so I knew when I came across the More Love Letters project I had to do it. The idea is simple – handwriting letters of kindness to people who are facing challenges in their lives.
• Kindness Rocks – every year when our grandchildren visit for summer vacation, I ask them to do a small art project that I keep on display to remind me of them. This year I am going to ask them to paint kind sayings on rocks that they can take home and place randomly, for people to come across and hopefully bring a smile to their face. I’m also hoping this project might have the added benefit of encouraging my grandkids to become junior RAKtivists!
• Blankets of Love – for a while now I have crocheted a blanket for each new baby that is born into our extended family. I’ve decided to extend this effort further afield and fulfill a request from our local hospital for blankets and hats for newborn babies in the maternity unit. This will have the added bonus of reducing my stash of yarn, which truly is an act of kindness for my overstuffed yarn storage boxes.
• Channeling Betty – our mom Betty was, among other things, a master of those small random acts of kindness – the smile at a passerby on the street, complimenting parents on their beautiful children and looking people in the eye when talking to them, to name just a few. When I think about how people reacted to her kindness, in spite of the joke about turning into your mother, where kindness is concerned I think I could do a whole lot worse. And so, I will make a point of carrying on her legacy of kindness by carrying out small everyday kind actions.

I am going to depend on Big and Little Sis to keep me accountable and I know it won’t take long for me to convince them to join the ranks of RAKtivists. How about you? Ready to help make kindness the norm through Random Acts of Kindness? Now more than ever we need more kindness in our lives. And I know for sure

Betty Would Love That!

We plan on doing a new post every Monday, so stay tuned for our next one entitled “Walk Before You Run.”