I am sure many of you have seen the "26 Acts of Kindness" tribute that is going around on Facebook ... if you haven't- here is the skinny:
There were 26 Victims at the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting .. a FB page was started encouraging everyone to do random acts of kindness towards one another. With each act of kindness, little notes are being attached with a tribute to one of the lives lost in the Sandy Hook shooting.
I had vaguley seen posts and news segments on this venture but to be honest hadn't paid very close attention. Not because the tragedy deosn't mean anything to me, but moreso because I thought I am kind always but that's good for some people who are far more "un-kind" than myself.
A few weeks ago when my Mama and I stopped by a local starbucks to grab our cub of joe before Peyton's gymnastics class a "random act of kindness" came our way. When we pulled up to pay for our coffee, the gentlemen at the window handed us our coffee and a note card that said:
Honoring Sandy Hook Elementary with 26 Acts of Kindness
This is #9
In memory of Catherine Hubbard, age 6
The person in the car in front of us had paid for our coffee and left the card for us. It wasn't until that moment that I realized the difference between being kind to those around you, that are in your everyday life and what a true difference a random act of kindness to a complete stranger can do for said stranger and/or yourself. The sad part is, we were so engrossed in whatever we were talking about that neither of us could even tell you what kind of car was in front of us that had done this kind deed.
It's easy to be kind to the people you see everyday (right?). But we quickly found out, after printing out our 26 Random Acts of Kindness cards to "pay it forward" so to speak, it's a lot more challenging to be kind to complete strangers. It made us question, what are random act of kindness? What qualifies? Is it all about small monitary pick me ups? It's not like in this day and age you can cook a pie and leave it on a door step. I felt very overwhelemed with myself when I couldn't even answer what a day ago seemed to be a very simple concept as to what kindness is and how do we show it?
What's expected kindness, i.e holding a door open for a mom with 2 kids and a car seat vs. going out of ones way to do something for a stranger such as buying their morning coffee.
So my question to you is .. what is kindness to you? What are some ideas of Random Acts? What should we expect of people in general as "kindness". Maybe I'm over thinking this, I am good at that. But then again, we as people are suspicious (and to an extent, rightfully so) of strangers approaching us, our house, cars, kids etc. How can we expect good things to happen if we so tightly limit what we allow near us?
I will conclude with this: Is the problem with "the people" of our world today that we aren't as kind to one another as perhaps the people decades before us were, OR is it that we are so consumed with the bad people of this world and "protecting ourselves" that we forget to let the good and kindness of people (perhaps strangers) in?