Embrace Curiosity on Your Kindness Journey If you understand each other, you will be kind to each other. John Steinbeck We all make judgments about others, based on attitudes we acquired from our families or from our own experiences. Over time, they become a part of us. When we withhold kindness from someone because of those judgments, we can be aware that we do not have enough information about […]
How Do We Become a Kinder Community? Community isn’t something that just happens to us. It’s something we build. Naheed Nenshi This is a continuation of my last message, Who do We Want to Be as a Community? Reading it will give you a background for this post. Once we choose a lens of kindness through which to view homeless people, we are inclined to think about solutions […]
Who Do We Want to Be as a Community? Find the goodness in everyone and pass it on with kindness. Dolly Parton We are in the middle of a crisis. Throughout our country, we are seeing a dramatic increase in people who are experiencing homelessness. It is a reality that affects millions of people – those who are living without a home and those who encounter them in […]
Compassion is the Heart of Kindness Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. – Dalai Lama By choosing to live with kindness, we also invited compassion to accompany us on our journey. Compassion is concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others, combined with a desire to help. It also has another dimension, which is usually ignored. It Begins with Self-Compassion If your compassion […]
7 Easy Steps to Compassion We can’t heal the world today, but we can begin with a voice of compassion, a heart of love, and an act of kindness. Mary Davis This morning, as I contemplated compassion, a tiny spider descended on an invisible thread before me. Hello, I said silently as she continued her journey. Hurry off the floor before some unaware foot crushes you. I recently […]
That Could Be Me I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it. Maya Angelou During the last few months, in our community and around the country, the homeless population has grown dramatically. As a result, more and more people are using online platforms and public meetings to complain that the presence of people living on the streets is having a […]
Compassion is the heart of Kindness Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. […]
Thich Nhat Hanh – A Man of Peace “The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” Thich Nhat Hanh, a world-renowned Vietnamese Buddhist monk died January 22, 2022 at his home in the Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam at the age of 95. He was an influential Zen master, who dedicated his life to living and teaching compassion, […]
That Could Be Me I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it. Maya Angelou During the last few months, in our community and around the country, the homeless population has grown dramatically. As a result, more and more people are using online platforms […]
Kindness Is More Than an Action After a while, kindness is not just an act you’re doing. It becomes who you are. Nipun Mehta* Most people are kind in their daily activities, given circumstances that are comfortable and with people who are familiar. We find it easy to greet each other and say a few words of acknowledgement. These are acts of kindness that make the day […]
We Are the World, We Are the Children There comes a time when we heed a certain call when the world must come together as one. Michael Jackson In a journey down Memory Lane this morning, we were led to revisit an old favorite of ours – a song that speaks to us of the present time, just as clearly as it spoke of our world 36 years […]
Kindness is a Path, Not an Event Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness … Leo Tolstoy Every morning, as Larry and I enjoy our coffee and tea, we talk about whatever is on our minds and hearts – a dream from the night before, something we read […]
How Love and Healing Arose from the Tragedy of Sandy Hook Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. – Aristotle On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut […]
A Powerful Vision for the New Year “In compassion and grace, be like the sun.” … Rumi How Do We See One Another? The way we view each other lays the foundation on which everything else is built When we make a decision to live our lives with kindness, we are choosing to be a powerful force for good in the world. The foundation that […]
Putting Judgment on Hold “It’s not things that upset us, it’s our judgment about things.” … Epictetus The key is to find ways to see people and accept them as they are. Sometimes daily interactions can be annoying – a rude comment can trigger a negative feeling. It’s easy to take offense. How do we get past our judgment and respond with kindness? It’s […]
Let’s Allow a Powerful Vision to Guide Us “Create a vision for the life you really want and then work relentlessly towards making it a Reality” ― Roy T. Bennett Do you have a vision of a better world than the one you […]
