My entry for this week Wordless Wednesday is a meaningful short video titled ‘Kindness,’ which is a collaboration between writer Amy Krouse Rosenthal and the Toronto-based design firm Thought Bubble. Before playing the video, you may like to pause it to let it finishes loading up first.
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” – Lao Tzu
—————————-
The “Rebuild Haiti” Better World Book Drive
Announcing the Rebuild Haiti Better World Book Drive! Better World Book is running a nation-wide book drive to raise funds for education in Haiti and they need your help to support a long-term effort to rebuild Haiti’s education system. By sending books, you can help fund their Haiti non-profit literacy partner, Plan USA. So dust off those great books you’re never going to read again, and do some good with them…
Ways You Can Help:
1. Send Books. Books can be sent to:
Better World Books
Attn: Help Haiti
55740 Currant Rd.
Mishawaka, IN 46545
Please send only books in good condition. Note: Book donations are not tax deductible.
1. You send books to Better World Books at the address above.
2. The books donated will be sold on their global network of marketplaces including BetterWorldBooks.com.
3. 50% of the net sales are donated to Plan USA, earmarked for the Haiti education rebuilding effort.
About Plan USA:
Plan USA is Better World Book new non-profit literacy partner. Funds raised through the Rebuild Haiti Better World Book Drive will be applied exclusively to education in Haiti.
Plan USA has been working in Haiti since 1973. They were recently selected by the Haitian government to implement the country’s education restoration effort alongside the Ministry of Education, UN agencies, local and international NGO partners.
Better World has made an initial donation of $10,000 to the Plan USA effort to rebuild Haiti. You can learn more about Plan USA at: http://www.planusa.org/
Like what Barbara de Angelis said, “Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference.” Let us do what we can to help the Haitian to restore their education system.
“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” – Mark Twain
Over the weekend, there was a report in the newspaper stating a headline from an article in the Seattle Times, ‘Kindness taught in Seattle school’s online class.’ As course leader Andy Smallman says, “The purpose of this ‘class’ is to have fun while being kind, to see how being kind to others is actually being kind to ourselves, and to start ripples of kindness that will be felt in faraway places.”
You may be curious to know what is taught in the class. According to the newspaper report by Richard Hartung (a consultant living in Singapore since 1992), there are no exams or grades – just homework. Like, do something kind for someone we love and then do something for someone we don’t know. I would like to call it enlisting people into a kindness movement by getting them to consciously perform act of kindness for their loved ones and even for people they do not know.
As Richard says, “Kindness – the ripple with no end.” Indeed, the ripples generate from the act of kindness will travel far and wide; they will go on to affect many others from where they first start. However, the ripples on the surface of the water in a lake will stop if the factor generating the ripples stop. Like the rain stops falling on the lake or someone stops throwing stone into it.
Like the water ripples, the kindness ripples will stop too if we stop being kind. Therefore, we must continue to perform act of kindness in order for the kindness ripples to continue.
Richard asked a question, “Does a kind act here or there really make a difference?” I believe that no matter how small a kind act may be, it will go on to create ripples; it will always make a difference. As Dilbert creator Scott Adams put it more simply, “Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.”
Not only that, as stated in the newspaper report, “Thinkers from Confucius to Dalai Lama as well as research from the US National Institutes of Health and many other sources all cite benefits to both giver and receiver.” We don’t need to be a genius like Albert Einstein to understand that; who has not felt good from being kind to loved ones and to strangers?
A water ripple that hits a wall before it disappears may bounce back to its source, depending on the strength of the ripple and how far the wall is. However, a kindness ripple generated will propagate and eventually but surely, it will go back to its source.
Let us take the time today to generate a kindness ripple through a small act of kindness, which will surely bring happiness to the life of others and to yourself.
“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” – Og Mandino
There is one choice you can make that will heal many of your relationship problems. This is the choice of kindness – to both yourself and to others.
This may sound simple, yet for many people, there is one choice far more important to them than kindness. This is the choice to attempt to control others’ feeling and behavior, outcomes, and their own painful feelings.
Kindness to yourself and to others comes from a desire to support your own highest good and the highest good of others. When your highest priority is to support the highest good of all, you are naturally kind. You don’t even have to think about it. It flows easily when your deepest desire is to be a loving, caring person.
But when your deepest desire is to protect yourself from getting hurt, then your automatic choice, particularly in conflict, is likely to attempt to control; with anger, withdrawal, blame, judgment, compliance, or resistance.
Jack claimed to love his wife Jenny. Yet as soon as Jenny didn’t do what he wanted or expected, he would immediately become angry, blaming and judgmental. Jenny, frightened of his anger and of losing his love, would immediately defend and then comply with Jack’s wishes, hoping to have control over his feelings and behavior toward her.
Jenny was afraid to do what she wanted to do. She constantly monitored her behavior, telling herself, “Jack will get mad if I do that.”
With all this anger, defensiveness and compliance, the fun, joy and passion that had been so wonderful at the beginning of their relationship was often non-existent.
Jack and Jenny sought my help because their marriage was in trouble and they wanted to save it. They both loved their two small children and didn’t want to break up the family.
As Jack and Jenny worked through the control issues that each had learned in their families, they started to have fewer conflict. Yet when a conflict did arise, each would automatically revert to their old behavior.
“I am going to give both of you an assignment,” I told them in our phone session. “It is a simple assignment, although not at all easy. This week, I want both of you to focus on being kind to yourselves and to each other. You will not be able to be kind to the other if you are not being kind to yourself. Jack, if you do not take loving care of yourself, you will end up feeling angry with Jenny. Jenny, if you are not taking loving care of yourself, you will end up trying to control Jack with your defensiveness and compliance. I know both of you try very hard to be kind to your children. I want both of you to practice treating yourselves and each other with the same kindness with which you treat your children.”
Both Jack and Jenny agreed to practice this assignment.
The next week, in their phone session, both of them claimed that the first four days of last week had been the best days in years.
“But then we slipped back into our old patterns,” said Jack. I forgot about kindness. Why is it so hard to remember?
“Jack, both you and Jenny have been practicing your controlling behaviors for your whole lives. These patterns are not easy to change. Your automatic unconscious response to fear is to control in some way. It takes a lot of practice for these patterns to change. You need to practice and practice making a conscious choice to be kind rather than slipping into the unconscious choice to control.”
Today, Jack and Jenny’s relationship is much improved. While they still occasionally revert to their controlling behavior, they are able to be kind much more of the time. As a result they are having more fun with each other, and their sexual relationship has greatly improved.
Join the Mailing list for Daily Love Quote in your Email now. The name and email address collected are not sold, given, or in any way disclosed to a third party. We will never give out your email address.
Subscribe
