The Editors of Conari Press - Random Acts of Kindness

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM CONARI PRESS

More Random Acts of Kindness

Kids' Random Acts of Kindness

The Practice of Kindness

The Community of Kindness

Practice Random Acts of Kindness

Copyright 2002, 1993 by Conari Press

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact: Conari Press, an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC, 500 Third Street, Suite 230, San Francisco, CA 94107.

Cover Illustration: Gary R. Phillips

Hand-lettering: Lilly Lee

Cover Design: Claudia Smelser/Maxine Ressler

Book Design: Maxine Ressler

ISBN: 978-1-57324-853-2

This has been previously cataloged by the Library of Congress

Random acts of kindness / by the editors of Conari Press

p. cm.

ISBN: 0-943233-43-7

1. Kindness--Quotations, maxims, etc. I. Conari Press.

BJ1533.K5R36 1993

92-38017

177.7--dc20

CIP

Printed in the United States of America

DATA 10 9 8 7 6

www.redwheelweiser.com

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For Anne Herbert,
the woman who started the movement

I t is a tragedy that in 2002 the mention of tragedy has itself become commonplace. So much has been said, so many flags waved since the heart of America was opened on September 11, 200l, that it seems almost opportunistic to mention it yet again.

And yet the events of that day are the new backdrop against which all our deeds, beautiful and kind, heinous or destructive, will now be silhouetted.

In such a world kindness is not a frill; it is a spiritual necessity. Indeed, where we once might have thought of random acts of kindness as charming, delightful, or even amusing, we cannot but see them now as the moment-by-moment, day-by-day acts of love that pierce the night sky with millions of pinpoints of light, the deed-by-deed creation of a world of hopeful possibilitiesindeed, of love.

For what we now know in the cells of ours soulswhat we have always known, but often forgetis that every corner of our universeand of our ourselvesis claimed by either goodness or ungoodness, by that which springs from love and gathers us all closer into the basket of life, or that which rises from unlove and makes our journey an arduous ordeal; and that for love to prevail we must practice it by teaspoonfuls, and bucketfuls and floods, in nanoseconds and minutes, week after week, for our entire lives.

The practice of kindness is the daily, friendly, homely caring form of love. It is both humblea schoolboy bringing his teacher a bouquet of dandelionsand exalteda fireman giving his life to save someone else's. Kindness is love with hands and hearts and minds. It is both whimsicalcausing our faces to crack into a smileand deeply touchingcausing our eyes to shimmer with tears. And its miraculous nature is such that the more acts of kindness we offer, the more of them we have to give, for acts of kindness are always drawn from the endless well of love.

Kindness is twice blessed. It blesses the one who gives it with a sense of his or her own capacity to love, and the person who receives it with a sense of the beneficence of the universe. Kindness heals us, because it reminds us of our oneness, allows us to see ourselves in one another's eyes, to remember that eyes themselves are a miracle, that seeing is a gift, and that the other, no matter who he or she may be, is, in one way or another, a perfect reflection of ourselves.

...............................

Fear grows out of the things we think; it lives in our minds. Compassion grows out of the things we are, and lives in our hearts.

Barbara Garrison

The power of kindness is immense. It is nothing less, really, than the power to change the world.

Daphne Rose Kingma

I don't care what anyone else says. These are awful times. There is tension in people's faces. Children wear bruises and forget to laugh. People sleep under black plastic garbage bags and carry their worlds in shop-ping carts. Everyone shrugs and calls it compassion fatigue. Anxiety and despair swirl around in our minds like discarded newspapers with headlines that tell us to remain on continual alert, indefinitely.

Our souls are leaking. We are in a recession, and we are receding. We are not moving toward anything. We are receding away. Away from what terrifies us. Away from not enough. Away from chaos. Away from poverty. Away from random acts of violence, from hurricanes and drive-by shootings and child abuse and homelessness and AIDS and drug wars. We are both clutching each other and moving away at the same time. This little book you hold is more needed than ever.

When I was quite small my immigrant Russian grandmother told me that people in this country give from the wrong place. When you give from here, she declared, pointing to her solar plexus, it's like keeping a ledger book. That's not giving, that's trading. I give you three so you give me three. I sweep the floor so you carry the bundles.

She pushed the wisps of white hair out of her eyes with the back of her red hands, shaking her head back and forth, tsk-ing her tongue against her teeth. You give your soul away when you give like that. Giving is supposed to be from here, she said, pointing to the center of her chest with a feathery finger. When you give from your heart, it's not so you get anything back. There is no owing or owed. You just give because you want to give. When you give like this, it fills you up. Your heart can never run out. The more you give from there, the fuller you will be.

Then she wiped her hands on the impeccably clean white apron and pulled me to her. You remember this, ketzaleh. Remember to give from your heart. When you give like this, there are no strangers. And remember to notice when other people give to you like this. Be sure to thank them.

Decades later, when I was struggling with a life-threatening disease, I traveled to a conference in Washington, D.C., in search of answers. One of the speakers was Maya Angelou, a superb poet and writer. She spoke of surviving a childhood full of terror and violence. Her handholds through the darkness were countless gifts of beauty offered to her by authors and artists who never even knew she existed. Their work inspired me, shaped my thinking, exposed me to what could be possible, she recalled. And I have never forgotten to say thank you for those random acts of kindness.

Without knowing it, without ever hearing my name or seeing the red knit dress I wore that day, Maya An-gelou's words left fingerprints on my heart as if it were warm wax. I drove north seeing the world through a different lens. Fate was just as unfair as it had been when I drove to the conference, but my perception had changed. I could not stop thinking of the incredible gifts that had been bestowed on me every day of my life: the music of Tchaikovsky that swirled me round and' round my awkward twelve-year-old body until I was a sugarplum fairy, the songs of Johnny Mathis that taught me how to love, Mark Twain's writing that taught me how to be brave, Monet's water lilies that taught me how to see, Mrs. McLean's garden that taught me about beauty in the back streets of Brooklyn. Each exit I passed on the interstate seemed to open another doorway to an embarrassment of riches I had forgotten to notice. The drive down to that conference had been fueled by my desire to get: get healed, get love, get friends, get attention. My return trip was just that: a return to my grand-mother's lessons on giving from the heart, a return to remembering that I was connected to the starlit sky, the fiery sun rising, the warm brown earth. If a garden could blossom every spring, so could I! As I returned home, my soul stopped leaking.