Lines Written in the Kindness/Gratitude Workshop

If I shrank to the size of a pea, I would hitch a ride on a dandelion seed head blowin’ on the wind, land in a smoking clearcut, stand atop a stump, look for survivors, and begin apologizing to everything around me.

You don’t have to like someone to show kindness toward them. You may even loathe them. So what? It’s not about you. Kindness is about someone else. Why apportion kindness to only those who are likable? Where’s the challenge in that? Challenging acts of kindness challenge all supposed easy great notions of kindness. The bigger the jerk the greater call for kindness.

I’ll never forget the moment when my ex wife chastised me in the checkout line of a grocery store after I was unkind to a cashier because the cashier was being kind to someone ahead of us and I was impatient. I never repeated that type of unkindness again.

Patience is kindness.

Our culture requires kindness or it will collapse,

Custodians deserve more gratitude. We virtually never see them work so it is difficult to thank them. Effort must be expended, Expend the effort.

I show gratitude on instinct. I don’t like scripted gratitude.

I typically don’t like cryptic kindness. Kindness shouldn’t be a riddle.

Nameless agents of kindness sometimes do better work than named ones.

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