Photograph of Margie McGregor.
Photo by 7-year-old Elvie

Hobbies Inspire

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