Visiting the virtue called Kindness
Kindness can be many things and yet it stems from one place. It can be a smile, paying a compliment, nurturing another, celebrating somebody, recognizing someone, making someone else happy, sharing a meal, respecting human beings, putting others needs before yours...essentially kindness involves doing for others what you would want for yourself. A form of self love that radiates outwards bringing joy and happiness. So let us commit today, this moment to revisit the virtue called kindness and developing it as our own special #superpower.
Inability during Times of Uncertainty
As nations across the globe fight the ongoing pandemic we are all trying to cope with the unprecedented levels of uncertainty. In it's wake it brings stress in varying degrees to young and old manifesting in the lack of self-love or the inability to create one’s own resource of love. This causes divisiveness and polarization so much so that we have to remind ourselves to be compassionate. To be empathetic. To be concerned. To be solicitous.
Let us pledge to make positive affirmation to one another. Brighten a stranger's day, be gracious, kind and compliment the person who delivers our packages, picks up our courier, drops off our groceries, teaches online classes, takes our food orders, staffs the doctor's office and countless others who are still working through the Pandemic putting themselves at risk.
Do not forget to be kind to yourself
Start with yourself. Go easy on oneself. Caught up in the sweep of these frustrating times, we should accept the various extremes of emotions at play – happiness, sadness, anger and uncertainty. Remembering that we are not perfect, and that's okay: we are all human beings, swaying with the ebb and flow of life.
Kindness broadens our perspectives and with the opportunity to practice kindness, we can find that we are more compassionate and more tolerant. Kindness brightens our world. It can lead us to down the path to Gratitude. To form new social relations as well as tangible ways to cultivate a more appreciative state of being - Gratitude is the link that bonds us together. It helps build co-operation, trust and a sense of safety in our communities It makes our society a brighter, lighter place to live.
This is what we need to reinforce us, everyday, with every gesture, thought and action. A simple expression that can address the ever-increasing imbalances in our society. Changing the way we view and interact with each other. Spreading the message of tolerance so each of us are responsible for one another.
Making Connections
This present global crisis has taught us that we are all inextricably linked in a way that we had never imagined before. What we send out into the world will bounce around like the butterfly effect and haunt us from around the globe. It can be a virus, a stock price, global warming or a tidal wave.
Columbia University doctor Kelli Harding has been examining the kindness phenomenon in her recent book, The Rabbit Effect. She says: "It helps the immune system, blood pressure, it helps people to live longer and better. It's pretty amazing because there's an ample supply and you can't overdose on it. There's a free supply. It's right there." Kindness, she says, can "turn a lot around and help people navigate things in their world".
If we don't learn our lesson this time around we would have paid too high a price for naught.
Let us take stock and realize that this is our reckoning to do good by one another. Let us continue to value one another's welfare - we are more together than separate. Declare a call for us to regroup and be there for each other. Assist one another, be neighborly, kind and helpful, keep safe and wear an mask, show concern, smile - so every action is a reflection of contagious "kindness".
We are stronger together
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