by Kathy Ruff
One of my clients owns the Mountain Valley Family Martial Arts school in Hazleton. Sensei Nevin Baskin continues to promote a program with his students as well as with students throughout Luzerne County to practice Random Acts of Kindness. The goal, in part, is to make children and adults aware of how random acts of kindness can touch the lives of others in a positive way.
Participants write their acts on a piece of recycled envelope or newspaper and give them to Sensei Nevin, who collects them for his project. This past week, Nevin showed me a list he received of 1,000 acts of kindness written out on an 9 x 12 recycled envelop and another written over top of an old newspaper. He added those to his box of growing acts.
Some suggestions include:
- Put money in an expired parking meter.
- Gather a group to clean up a parking lot.
- Buy shoes for someone in need.
- Pay the toll for the person in the car behind you.
- Adopt a family for Christmas.
Send an encouragement card to someone you know who might need one. - Volunteer at a hospital.
- Visit a nursing home.
- Scrape the ice off the window of the car parked next to you.
- Offer to help a friend or fellow student.
- Invite someone to a social event.
- Adopt a stray animal.
- Smile at a bus driver.
- Listen to someone you might usually tune out.
- Return a shopping cart to the store.
- Buy biscuits or a big bone for your neighbor’s dog.
- Compliment someone on their clothes.
- Treat your local police officer to coffee.
- Treat someone to a movie.
- Take care of a grave site.
- Pass on information you receive in the mail or read about in the newspaper for things or events that you think another person might be interested in.
This represents a small sampling of the limitless number of small acts of kindness we can share with others who lives touch ours.
Why not take part in this project and challenge yourself to practice (and log) random acts of kindness in your life? Can you imagine a world where this was the norm?
