We can’t  LEGISLATE LOVE

or    outlaw    H A T E

.          .          .b      u     t

You

I

US

WE

can make a difference

H          I          S          T          O          R          Y

proves that as well.     .     .

We know that

Compassion and Kindness

Loving and Caring

DO     NOT

stop bullets or halt bombings

or roadblock rented Home Depot Trucks

from running up on sidewalks and

killing people

b          u          t

Loving and Caring

Compassion and Kindness

don’t pull trigger or light fuses or press on excelerators, either.       .       .

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, was founded in Denver, Colorado, in response to the city’s “Summer of Violence” in 1993, when dozens of people were killed in gang-related shootings, including several children. One victim of stray gunfire was just 10 months old.

The organisation borrowed the writer Ann Herbert’s call for people to “practice random acts of kindness, and senseless acts of beauty”.

The phrase has since been popularised on doormats and bumper stickers across the US and encourages Americans to surprise one another with good deeds.

Kelsey Gryniewicz, a director at the foundation, advocates activities such as anonymously leaving hampers of food on neighbours’ doorsteps and paying for the person queuing behind you at a coffee shop.

“It’s not just about single acts, though,” she says. “It’s about changing your mentality from day to day.”

The World Kindness Movement represents the work of organisations from 23 different countries. “It has gone way past the level of community endeavour,” says its secretary general Michael Lloyd-White.

Would you buy a “suspended coffee” for someone in need?

But measuring the impact of these groups is not easy.

Each year, the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) publishes a World Giving Index, which attempts to track certain types of giving behaviour in 146 countries across the globe.

The data is extracted from an annual poll conducted by research firm Gallup and ranks countries according to the proportion of people who have volunteered, helped strangers at random, or donated money to charity in a typical month.

In first position last year was Australia, where a third of the population volunteers each month and two-thirds claim to have helped a stranger and donated money to charity.

Lisa Grinham, from CAF’s Australian branch, says that the rise is due to the flooding that hit Queensland and Victoria the year before, pointing out that figures tend to rise in times of national hardship.

In the US, which dropped from first to fifth place in the global index last year, a team of academics is working on a programme of compassion education in schools to try to reverse the decline.

Richard J Davidson from the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison thinks that the level of kindness in society can be improved if children are taught to be more empathetic from an early age.

“Compassion should be regarded as a skill that can be cultivated through training,” he says.

The kindness curriculum is currently being taught in 10 schools across Wisconsin. The project is still at the research stage, but “the early signs are promising”, he says.

Not everybody is convinced that focussing on compassion in this way is helpful, however.

“We have made altruism a sacred object, so we’ve been blinded to its deleterious effects,” says Barbara Oakley from the University of Oakland, Michigan.

In a new book called Pathological Altruism, she argues against what she sees as a cultural obsession with the notion of kindness.

“There’s a misguided view that empathy is a universal solvent. Helping others is often about your own narcissism. What you think people need is often not actually what they need.”

Kelsey Gryniewicz doesn’t think that the American kindness movement is guilty of that charge, arguing that there are tangible, practical benefits to the activities they recommend.

“It doesn’t have to be about cradling people in a bubble of kindness,” she says.

In Singapore, William Wan takes a more reflective view. “We must be realistic. We mustn’t be naive. Kindness movements can’t solve all our problems, but if they can solve some of our problems, why not use them?”

Truth:

Love

Compassion

Kindness

Caring

are only WORDS.       .       .

They only become

MASS     WEAPONS     OF     CONSTRUCTION

when we decide to let those very

a           c           t           i           o           n           s

possess us with all of their force

Love

Compassion

Kindness

Caring are only WORDS

Until SomeONE

gives them Meaning.          .          .

Are

Y       O       U

That Some One.           .           .

It’s November 14

.        .        .in just  8  days

We will be celebrating

T H A N K S G I V I N G

NO        MATTER        WHAT

.        .        .Hopefully we’ll understand

Before November 22

and way past it

That  G R A C E

is not just a prayer

we say before

a meal.          .          .

It’s a  L I F E S T Y L E

The ultimate Question

and even more Significant Answer:

IS    IT    YOURS ?

It’s really the neverending

S E A S O N

For You

I

Us

WE

To continue being an arsenal

in the armory

of the assembling

of the Greatest

Assortment  of

MASS   WEAPONS  OF  CONSTRUCTION

THIS   IS   NOT   A   POLITICAL  STATEMENT.          .          .

It is an invitation for a

Personal Inventory to

REALIZING      BY

BEING         A         DIFFERENCE

i   s 

MAKING                A                DIFFERENCE

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm  of  the  DAY:

Sometimes.          .          .
M A K I N G    A    D I F F E R E N C E 
I S     J U S T     B E I N G     T H E     D I F F E R E N C E