Editors of Conari Press - Random Acts of Kindness: An Illustrated Celebration

First published in 2010 by

Red Wheel/Weiser, llc

With offices at:

500 Third Street, Suite 230

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2010 by The Editors of Conari Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, llc . Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Portions of this text appeared in slightly different form in Random Acts of Kindness (2002), More Random Acts of Kindness (2007), and Practice Random Acts of Kindness (2007).

ISBN: 978-1-57324-484-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

is available upon request.

Cover and text design by Tracy Johnson

Typeset in Baskerville, Bree, Gotham, and Oksana

Cover and text illustration ShadyMaple/iStockphoto.com

Printed in Hong Kong

GWP

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When you carry out acts of kindness you get a wonderful feeling inside.
It is as though something inside your body responds and says,
Yes, this is how I ought to feel.

Rabbi Harold Kushner

Introduction

So many gods, so many creeds,

So many paths that wind and wind,

While just the art of being kind

Is all the sad world needs.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Our world can seem like a sad place. Open the newspaper and draw in the suffering, the pain, the palpable sense of lack. Or, occasionally, read something that lifts the spirits, like a Thanksgiving Day article about a mother who must choose between making her mortgage payment and sending money to her daughter for groceries. She misdials her daughters phone number, and the stranger who gets the recorded message gets in touch with the family and delivers enough groceries for a turkey feast and to feed them until the next paycheck comes. I helped people, says the Good Samaritan. I think its what anybody would have done.

The stories in this book are as varied as the people telling them, but at the foundation of each is a very simple and compassionate connection between strangers who, for a moment, experienced one another not as strangers, but as family. In a sense, kindness truly is the acting out of our deep and real connection to everyone and everything around us.
It is the realization that all of us are in factnot just in theory or theologyin this together.

Kindness is what we do, person to person, moment to moment. It is about being who we truly are. Its power is not only easily accessible to anyone who cares to use it, but it also can never be diminished; it expands with every action. It has the ability to utterly transform another persons life through the simplest of actions. It has the capacity to return us to the very core of our humanity. Kindness can and does open hearts, erase boundaries, and change lives. Heres to celebrating the glorious acts of kindness commemorated in these pages, to the many more happening all over the world right this moment, and to the many yet to come!

The quality of mercy is not strained,

it dropeth as the gentle rain from heaven

upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:

it blesseth him that giveth and him that takes.

William Shakespeare

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 anothers eyes, to remember that eyes themselves are a miracle, that seeing is a gift, and that the other person, no matter who he or she may be, is, in one way or another, a perfect reflection of ourselves.

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

Daphne Rose Kingma

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, its like keeping a ledger book. Thats not giving, thats 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 backs 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, its 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 When you give like this, there are no strangers.

Dawna Markova

Several years ago, when I was living in Chicago, I read in the newspaper about a little boy who had leukemia. Every time he was feeling discouraged or particularly sick, a package would arrive for him containing some little toy or book to cheer him up with a note saying the present was from the Magic Dragon. No one knew who it was. Eventually the boy died and his parents thought the Magic Dragon would finally come forth and reveal him or herself. But that never happened. After hearing the story, I resolved to become a Magic Dragon whenever I could, and have had many occasions.

If there is any kindness I can show,

or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not deter or neglect it,

as I shall not pass this way again.

William Penn

Who would ever think that a telephone answering machine could change your life? I had just broken up from a long and very painful relationship and found myself suddenly in a new city without friends, without anything to do or any desire to do anything. I was like a listless blob of expended energy. Every day I would come home from work and just stare at the walls, sometimes crying but mostly just sitting and wondering if this cloud would ever go away.

I had bought an answering machinewhy, I dont know, since nobody ever called me. One night I came home and the red light was flashing. I couldnt believe ita phone call. When I played it back, a wonderful male voice started to apologize that he had called the wrong number, and I burst into tears. But then he kept talking. He said my voice on the message had sounded so sad and he just wanted to tell me that it was okay to be sad, that being able to feel that sadness was important. His message went on for almost twenty minutes, just talking about how important it was to be able to go through the pain instead of running away from it, and how even though it probably seemed impossible now, things would get better. He never even said his name, but that message was, in a very important way, the beginning of my life.

We do not remember days,

we remember moments.

Cesare Pavese

The purpose of life

is a life of purpose.

Robert Byrne

Do every act of your life
as if it were your last.