Random Acts of Kindness

I listen to K-Love for my daily dose of Contemporary Christian music. This radio station focuses on positive news around the world. The other day a news jockey read the following story about a pastor's kind offer and his decision to start the "365 Club" on Facebook:

http://www.christianpost.com/church/General/2009/01/pastor-s-story-of-kindness-sparks-idea-for-365-club-05/index.html

Basically, he wants people who join the club to perform a random act of kindness every day for a year. I found that intriguing, although I don't do Facebook. Anyway, members in this club post their good deeds for others to read. I'm not sure if that's positive or not. On the one hand, some people might provide examples of kind acts that others might not have thought of. It sounds a little too much like tooting your own horn, however, which seems counterintuitive to the point of the movement.

I know the term "random acts of kindness" has been around for years, but I appreciate that this man is bringing it to the forefront of people's minds again. Perhaps hundreds of people who heard this news story will now make a conscious effort to be a more positive force in the world. And those hundreds of people may inspire thousands of others to do the same.

In a similar vein, Liberty Mutual Insurance has a terrific ad campaign using the notions of both "random acts of kindness" and "pay it forward." They have several different commercials showing how one person's small, positive action can have a linear or ripple effect on others.

So how about a non-Facebook challenge? Commit a random act of kindness every day. Don't brag about it. Just do it. And if later in the day you cut someone off in traffic, or commit some other such human frailty, do an extra kindness to offset it.

You never fully know the effect that your life, your words, your actions - positive or negative - have on others, whether they're family, friends, neighbors or strangers.

Stories of violence, injustice, and abuse abound. Let's follow the example of this pastor and try to turn that around. Every day. And in small ways.

A non-holiday?

New Years has never been a big deal for me. That sentiment was cemented last night when my kids wanted to stay up until midnight to "celebrate" New Years. I told them that people just count down the final minute before midnight, then kiss and say, "Happy New Year!"

They didn't believe me. They figured there had to be more to it than that.

So, they counted the seconds to midnight and watched the people on television kiss and yell into the camera that familiar phrase.

Boring! Then they went to bed. Nowhere near as exciting as Christmas or Halloween, that's for sure! The only good thing about it all was that they got to stay up until midnight.

So is New Years strictly an adult holiday? If you're a drinker, then you probably like celebrating it. But if you don't drink, it's not that much fun. Yeah, you get together with friends, but how is it different from getting together with friends any other night of the year? Of course on New Years Eve, you're more likely to share the road with a preponderance of drunks. Oooh, fun!

What about all the people at Times Square who stood in the freezing temperatures for hours? For what? The chance to kiss on television? A million people show up, so the odds that you will be one of the twenty couples they film kissing at midnight are pretty slim. Yet the ones interviewed claim it's "so worth it" to be there at midnight.

Hmmm. Right.

Freezing outside for hours just to say, "Happy New Year," is not my cup of tea. Not to mention using port-a-potties and pushing through a million-strong crowd to use them. (Yuck!) The supposed payoff for these people is to be able to claim that they were in Times Square when the ball dropped. Whoop-dee-doo! How about the folks who did the same thing to ring in 2008? Or 1986? Does it really matter?

I guess I'm too cynical for my own good.

"Happy New Year!"