Would you bring into your thoughts your favourite hobby and the joy it
brings, personally and something you can proudly share.
Then spend five minutes bringing to your memory something you have done in
the course of your day that is kind, or has been a kind act towards you. Or
it may be a heartwarming act that happens in your presence, which also
expresses your own views — and yes, an act of kindness towards yourself.
Kind acts, even though they may take a minute, may stay with you for the
rest of the day — and may even come back into your memory many weeks or even
years later.
I feel this is the true depth of each human being on the planet, but many
have not come from a home where there is kindness. We do need, and indeed
needed, to have kindness taught as a first priority in each school, bringing
this part of humanity to the fore. For example, a child that has a caring
home would be encouraged at school to let her class teacher know if he or
she spots a classmate that is putting up a hand to ask the teacher if they
can go to the loo, and to just nip to the side of the teacher and point this
out. So very much gained — and puddles prevented!
I do not believe that impersonal, detached institutions are the answer. We
need to positively value ourselves and those people who, in the course of a
day, are in – or come into – our own lives, no matter how well or how little
we know them.
I joked to a friend that I intended to start a political party called the
Kindness Party! But you see, I do not need to do that. There is a Kindness
Party that naturally exists in each community and in each country of the
world, through natural acts of kindness. We are not a political party that
has any need to go to Parliament. Nor are we an organised, institutionalised
network. We are simply caring people who have ‘got it’!
Margie McGregor
Margie McGregor Writes
Email
margiemcgregor@gmail.com
Woodstock, Oxfordshire, UK