“The Little, Nameless, Unremebered Acts of Kindness and Love”

A friend recently posted this Wordsworth quote on Facebook, and talked about how she had noticed a lot of small, generous actions lately, and how they made the world a little brighter.

I wasn’t familiar with the quote, so I looked it up. 

“The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”  William Wordsworth.

The comments on the Facebook post talked about how true goodness lies in the small, selfless acts of kindness that happen every day. 

I love the quote, and some of the comments were thought provoking.  It’s so easy to get hung up on the big picture, and to feel like the small things are insignificant to the point of being meaningless. 

But the small acts do matter.  Whether it’s sharing an umbrella, giving someone a genuine compliment, or holding the elevator for someone.  We all have those days where it seems like nothing we do is right, and everything goes wrong.  Doesn’t it help when someone is unexpectedly kind?  Even if it’s a tiny little thing.  You never know who else is having one of those days, and how much a small thing that seems insignificant to you may mean to them. 

I don’t really have a picture to go with this, and you know that typically means I share a cat picture, so here’s one of Mortimer looking especially cute. 

Have you seen or benefited from any little acts lately?

Sharing Pictures

Does it sometimes seem like the internet can be a really bad place? Some days it seems like all you see are news articles about really bad things happening, your email doesn’t bring good news, and your Facebook feed is a steady diet of negativity. But sometimes there are days when the internet is a tool that reminds us that, yes, there are good people out there. People who maybe want to make the world just a tiny little bit better if they can.

Today was one of those days for me. One of my rescue friends posted a really cute picture of her dog and little boy on a Facebook page, Photo Doggies for Anthony. Apparently the page was started on behalf of a boy named Anthony who’s going through cancer treatment at a children’s hospital in Arizona. They have therapy dog visits some days, but not every day. Evidently those visits are a very big deal to Anthony (because who doesn’t feel better with a dog around?), so someone decided to start a Facebook page asking people to share photos of their dogs. The idea was that he’d at least get to see dog pictures every day. 

The page seems to have gone viral, with people all over the world posting dog pictures, and encouraging their friends to post dog pictures as well. It’s a really small thing. It really doesn’t take long at all to post a picture on Facebook, but maybe it’s something that makes it a little easier for a kid to deal with something that no one wants to face. It has to feel good that so many people who will never meet him care enough to try to brighten his day just a little.

If you’re on Facebook, I encourage you to check it out. There are a lot of cute pictures, and the comments all seem to be positive, coming from a place of kindness and hope. If you’re so inclined, take a minute to share a dog picture. (Cat people, take heart, there are a few cat pictures as well.) If there’s anything to the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s a page with millions of good words, and that’s something we can probably all use a little more of.

Thirty-One Things This Holiday Season

Have you seen the movie Robin Hood with Russell Crowe?  If you haven’t, you should.  It’s a great movie.   If you’re a huge Russell Crowe fan (like me) it’s an amazing movie.  It also has a really great line (that I unfortunately couldn’t find a youtube clip of) where Russell Crowe (as Robin) is talking about the need to pay something back.  He says something along the lines of, “We can’t repay our good fortune with bad grace.  It invites darkness.” 

I think there’s a large amount of truth to that.  Call it what you will – paying it forward, giving back, karma, sharing blessings – whatever you may choose to call it.  I think there’s a need to share and contribute to the good.  

That’s one of the things that I love about this time of year.  We’re getting really close to the time when people are more generous and try to be nicer than usual to others.  You just hear so many great stories about people being kind around the holidays.  Now, I know some people say that it’s terrible that it takes the holidays to bring out the good in people, and I think they’re right to a degree.  After all, the holiday season is short.  Hopefully we’re all being nice for more than about six weeks a year. 

It also seems like being kind just comes very naturally for some people.  My husband is one of them.  He automatically holds doors for people, helps them with packages, things like that.  It doesn’t for me.  I have to constantly remind myself not to just bulldoze my way through the day.  It takes conscious thought, which I realize is not an excuse.

Then you come across things like this blog that I found last year.  It started off as an ordinary guy, around my age, wanting to make the world a little better place for his baby.  So he set out to do 366 random acts of kindness in 2012.  The acts were varied and included things like shoveling snow, donating blood, and donating to and raising awareness for various causes.  Whenever you’re feeling bad about humanity, read through the archives.  You’ll feel a little better. 

When I got the news about my hepatic adenomas shrinking I really felt like I’d dodged a bullet or been given something of a second chance.  That news lifted a huge burden, but it was a burden that I wasn’t carrying alone. My husband, my sister, my best friend, one of my transport friends, my boss, my co-workers, one wonderful nurse in the radiology department, and a few other people have been incredibly supportive and kind. 

All of that being said, I feel like I need to do something.   So I came up with the idea for 31 acts of kindness, or good deeds, (I don’t think what you call it is that important) this holiday season.  I’m 31 years old, and December has 31 days, so it works in my mind.  I’m also a deadline oriented person, so saying that I will accomplish them between today, November 16, 2013 (which, coincidentally, is my parents’ wedding anniversary) and December 31, 2013, means that I will actually do them instead of just having another good idea that comes to nothing.  It’s just how I function.  Telling all of you also gives me some accountability. 

I have a few things in mind, and actually did my first one today (posting about that tomorrow), but don’t have all 31 planned.  So if you have any ideas, or want to share what you do, I’d really love to hear about it.  

Some Thoughts On Hospice

First of all, I want to say thank you to all of you for your kind comments on my last post about my grandmother going into hospice care.  As always the blogging world (at least my little corner of it) has shown itself to be a pretty great place.

My grandmother died in a hospice house on Saturday, September 21, 2013 at about 1:30 pm. I don’t think watching a loved one die can ever be easy, but the people at hospice certainly know how to make a terrible experience a little better.  For those of you who may not be familiar, here’s a brief article that explains what hospice care is all about. 

The overwhelming kindness of everyone, from security guards, to strangers who volunteer their time, to the doctors and nurses is probably what impressed me the most.  Hospitals are usually very impersonal.  I understand that they’re very busy doing really tough jobs, and I respect that.  But hospice is different.  Though I’m sure they’re busy, no one acts like it.  They talk to you when you go in, ask you how you’re doing, how your loved one is doing, ask if you need anything.  Upon checking in, my parents were given a care package for themselves and my grandmother.  It contained a handmade afghan, a handmade cervical pillow, a handmade doll, snacks, activity books (crossword puzzles, word search, etc.) toiletries (toothbrush, toothpaste, soaps, shampoos, etc.) and a very kind note.  The bag had everything you could think of to make the time there a little easier.

Not to confuse kindness with false hope, everyone is very open about the fact that your loved one isn’t going to get better.  No one sugar coats anything.  The staff is very open about how much time your loved one may have left, and about the dying the process.  They just manage to do it with kindness rather than being impersonal or macabre.   They assure you that your loved one will be kept comfortable, they tell you they wish for peace for all of you, and they do everything possible to make it peaceful. 

Honestly, I don’t know how these people do their jobs.  I couldn’t do it.  If I tried, I think the only way I’d survive would be to maintain some distance, but they don’t seem to.  They ask about the families and chat with you.  One nurse even hugged us when we left for the last time.

This begs the question of how you even begin to repay that, or even pay it forward.  Saying thank you just doesn’t seem like enough.  We brought in dinner most days (my mom never left) and always brought extra to offer to people working there and other families there waiting.  Most people seemed really surprised by that, but feeding people in a crisis is how some of us make it through. 

We’re sending you thank you cards to people who were especially kind, and I’m planning to bring in a few cakes; one for the day shift, one for the night shift, and one for the family waiting room.  It doesn’t seem like nearly enough, but it’s the best I’ve been able to come up with.  Our family is very grateful for what they did, and I just think they need to know it.

On a lighter note, I promise my next post will be a much happier one, and I’m really looking forward to catching up on everything I missed while I was away from blogging. 

 

Kindness

Kindness is defined (on Wikipedia) as the “act or state of being kind, being marked by good and charitable behavior, pleasant disposition and concern for others.” Synonyms include compassionate, gracious, and sympathetic.

Sadly, we don’t always see very many examples of kindness in our daily lives. For some people the jobs they must do every day are a constant reminder of just how unkind the world can be. People can be cruel, or more often, just thoughtless.

Fortunately, there are still people out there who practice kindness, every day, in large and small ways. I stumbled across this blog, 366 Random Acts of Kindness, by accident one night a few weeks ago when I was procrastinating doing housework. It’s an amazing, yet simple, concept. The author has vowed to do one random act of kindness every day this year, for a total of 366 random acts of kindness. The acts thus far have included doing the dishes so his wife doesn’t have to, writing a condolence letter to the parents of a solider killed in action, giving blood, buying lunch for a shift at the local fire department, and carrying groceries for people. I love reading his blog. I look forward to it every day to see what he will come up with next.

There are three things that have really grabbed my attention about this blog; first, it seems like he’s just “an average guy”, he lives with his wife and daughter in an apartment, and works a full time job, so he’s busy with normal obligations just like most of us are. Second, he doesn’t seem to have vast amounts of disposable income to throw at causes; sure some of the things he has done cost money, but many are free. It just goes to show us that even with limited financial resources we can still do something to help others. The third has been the snowball effect; in reading the comments on the blog it seems like other people have been inspired to perform the same or similar acts in their day to day lives. Who knows how many other people have been inspired by those acts to do the same?

This has really made me think about some of the kindnesses that have been done for me in my life, and of the kindnesses that I can do for other people in return. Kind acts don’t have to be anything extraordinary; sometimes something as simple as holding a door for someone who has their hands full can push their day from bad to good. Sometimes taking the time to do something like taking a meal to someone who is ill can make the difference between them feeling alone or feeling supported. So now I want to make more of an effort to find ways to be kinder to people. I doubt I will come up with anything as grand as 366 random acts, but we can all do something, right? Hopefully I will have updates to share along the way, since most us can benefit from a little more kindness, grace, sympathy, and compassion in our lives.