Acts of Random Kindness to You

First of all, Happy 4th of July. If you are reading this than I want you to know that I appreciate you and your comments. For me today was one of those days where “Kindness” seemed all around and for no apparent reason. It seemed to just be Random !!

First, I was in the ATM drive thru line getting some money and a man approached. Okay, I am the first to admit that it wasn’t his smartest timing, but alas, he meant well. He had gotten out of his car and wanted us to know that we had a brake light out. I already knew this, but yet began to think about the hundreds of people who have probably noticed it and not said a word. People that were in much better positions to approach me and did not. For whatever reason, this man did and for that I felt fortunate.
After leaving the bank, we stopped at the Farmer’s Market with my mom and dad. As I have said before, my father is sick with Alzheimer’s Disease. Most people that know our family are aware of this and the reactions vary from overly friendly to obviously trying to avoid us. I can respect both approaches as it is not an easy thing to deal with even when you are around it every day. However, I am always grateful as I was today when someone seems genuinely glad to see him and shake his hand. He doesn’t know who they are, but for that moment, he is appreciated for the man that he has always been.

Finally, I want to close with a website that I found today. It is something that I think everyone should take a look at whether you are in need or are in a position to help someone else. Wish Upon a Hero is a website that allows just those types of connections to be made. You can go there and send school supplies to a needy child or you can go and ask someone to help with your needs. It is all based on just good old human decency. Will people take advantage? Sure, maybe some will, but I bet the majority will pay it forward and as I always say, it is easy to make the world a better place with one Act of Random Kindness at a time.

Well, the regular school year is over and with it comes a lot of changes for the coming year. I don’t mind the changes so much, but it is nice when those changes come with positive attitudes and willingness to give new things a shot. I mean after all, how are we suppose to get the kids to give things a try if we aren’t willing, right?

So, instead of focusing on those people I call “blockers”, I will focus on those that go out of the way to make work a better place. There are a couple of people that are genuinely positve no matter the situation. They aren’t fake about it, rather they can see the good in everything. It makes work a much better place.

One of these people retired last year and I still miss her smiling face. She had been a teacher for 35 years and yet smiled at the kids and her coworkers and always had a kind word. My first week at the job, I remember having a terrible day and this lady invited me to her classroom for “tea”. It struck me as odd at the time, but looking back, it is one of the kindest things anyone could have done. After all, I wanted to be a part of this new job.

Another thing that makes an impression on me is people who not only remember my name, but take a minute to call me by name. It makes me feel like I am important enough to them and I try to do the same with others.

So, with every new year at work will come change and that is o-kay with me. What do you do to help you embrace changes?

As a child growing up, I had several biological aunts and uncles. Some, I haven’t seen or talked to in over 25 years, but there is Aunt Lucy on my father’s side and “Aunt” Catherine from my mom’s side that have always been there for me.

The first thing to notice is that I put “Aunt” in quotations in referring to Aunt Catherine. Aunt Catherine was actually a cousin of my mother’s who lost her parents at a young age and grew up like a sister to my mother. Aunt Catherine died a year ago February right before Valentine’s Day.

She had fought the long and hard battle of mesothelioma including having a lung removed that allowed her to live an additional 3 years. I knew I would miss her, but lately it has been an intense feeling of something being missing from my life. She was simply an amazing woman.

Aunt Catherine had little and gave lots. You never went to her home and didn’t get an ice cream cone and more importantly, lots of love and attention. She would have given her last dollar to see her kids get what they wanted. She fought some hard roads including a bitter divorce, mental illness, and then cancer, but she stayed so positive. She was always worried about others. Even in those last weeks, concerned about my mother and father or  her daughter being able to have children.

I sat with Aunt Catherine shortly before Christmas that last year and it was one of the best spent afternoons I can remember. We talked a lot and sometimes when she was catching her breath, we just sat. I was so glad I had taken the time because sometimes I would get too busy and drive by her house thinking there would always be tomorrow.

Her daughter recently told me that the day before she died, Aunt Catherine talked about me and she wished I would reconsider having children. She wished this only because she would not want me to ever be alone in a time of illness or need. Still thinking of others even then, it didn’t surprise me, but it did touch me.

I miss Aunt Catherine, her kindness and compassion that is found in so few these days. If there is an Aunt Catherine in your life, spend time with her or him because it will be over and there you will be “missing” them terribly at the strangest times.

As I flipped through the channels last night, one of my favorite movies in the whole world was just ending. As you can probably guess from the title of this post, it was The Wizard of Oz. I watched the last few minutes of it where Dorothy clicks her heels and wants to be home once again.

Sometimes, life’s journey takes us away from that one place we consider home. I know for me, the one thing that was able to take me away was meeting Tom. I loaded up my stuff, quit a good job, and waved goodbye to everything I knew. However, three years later almost to the date, I was back home again.

For me, home isn’t a building, it is a community that is filled with familiar people, places, events, and yes at times even some really strange occurrences.  It is seeing the place I first went to school and getting ice cream from the same ice cream stand that I did years ago. Home is the place I fought with my brothers and then kept their secrets from my parents. Home is where I rode my first horse, drove my first car, and danced at my first prom.

I am fortunate in that circumstances allowed me to return home and in that I have a husband that was willing to move to this tiny town where he knew nobody if that was what made me happy. Sometimes, I wish I had more money and then I look around me and see how very rich I already am. I would love to hear what home is to you even if for some reason you have to be away from it for awhile.

I often hear people remark that there is nothing in the news, but bad news. I decided today to take a couple days worth of newspapers and see what I could discover that might not be bad news. It may take a little more looking, but I found that there is good news to be found.

I would like to share with you two articles that caught my attention in the newspaper today. The first was about a lady from Plattsburgh, NY. You may not know where that is, but it is about as far north as you can get in New York State and it is also home to the best college in the world, SUNY Plattsburgh !  Anyway, back to the story. This lady, Linda Howard found a bank deposit bag in the road. Inside was $15,000 and can you guess what she did? She headed for the local police department to turn it in. It turned out that an employee of a local business had set it atop her car and forgot about it.  I can’t even imagine how surprised and pleased they were to get it back.  Linda Howard is sure making the world a better place by being an honest citizen.

Another story in the paper that really kind of caught me off guard was about a politician from the Albany, NY area. Bob Reilly announced that he is donating his after tax salary to groups that need it in the Albany and Saratoga area. Over the years, this assemblyman has donated over $218,000 to such groups. He has a simple reason for this kindness, he wants people to think better of their government.  That seems like a good reason to me, how about you?

So, it goes to show that news like anything else is all about perspective. There is good news to be found if you are looking and their is kindness all around us. Sometimes, we just need to take a fresh look. Here’s to hoping you are having a wonderful weekend.

I hope that all of you had a wonderful week. My week was busy as usual, but we did have a snow day which gave a much needed sleeping in time on Wednesday morning. It is the one good thing about our weather here in the Northern part of New York State.

The reality of life is that we all have to work. I am lucky as I love my job and that makes getting up in the morning a little easier. However, what I can’t understand is that when opportunities present themselves, why anyone would not want to make a place that they spend so much time a better place to be. After all, if I have to be there than it would be nice to enjoy it as much as I can.

Some people are naturally good at this and no matter what is going on in their lives, they always seem to want to spread kindness. Such is the case of one lady that teaches down the hall from me. For as long as I have worked at this building, her husband has been ill with Alzheimer’s. When she discovered that my family was struggling with the same thing, she offered any and all assistance, information, or even just an ear. Not a week has gone by that she hasn’t inquired about me or my parents whom she has never even met. She is simply by nature a good person with a very large heart.

This lady has lead by example both to her students and to other teachers. She doesn’t gossip and she goes about her day making the best of it. It makes those around her want to do the same. This week, I was concerned when I walked by her door because she looked a little down and out. After a brief discussion, it became apparent that her husband had declined rapidly recently and she was feeling sad. (Such is the case when living with a loved one that has Alzheimer’s)

On top of it, she had recently had a granddaughter born and was so thrilled, but certainly not as much as she could have been if her husband was well and able to share in it with the family. It wasn’t long after talking that things turned to my family as they so often do with her. She isn’t one to focus on herself. As we parted ways, it got me thinking that kindness in the workplace is something that is planted and will grow if we let it.

Today, I had flowers sent to this amazing coworker with a simple congratulations card attached to the new grandma. I know that it thrilled her. Certainly to spread kindness in the workplace, all acts don’t have to be something material, but they do have to be thoughtful and genuine. So, next week….see what you can do to make your job a better place to be. Be sure to come back and tell us how you are making the world better one act of random kindness at a time.

Imagine waking up one morning in a little north country town and having the free library destroyed by fire. That is exactly what happened in the small community of Depauville, NY. Maybe it is the reader in me or maybe it is the teacher, but whatever it is, it made me sad.

I hadn’t heard much about this little library in quite some time and then last night on our local news, they finally mentioned that it is repaired and ready to roll with one exception. There are still no books. Oh, not to worry, they are working on establishing some grants and funds and probably are just plain happy to be back on their feet, but in the meanwhile, the shelves remain bare and the library closed.

So, I began talking today with a few of my students. It isn’t my community and it isn’t their community, but it is a north country community nonetheless. I have a few extra sets of brand new books that I had purchased and received and the light bulb went on. So, my students looked up the address to the little library and filled out the envelope in preparation of sending them some books to put on their shelves.

These books by themselves won’t reopen the little Depauville Free Library, but they will let the good people there know that we are thinking of them and wishing them well. Did you find something kind to do today? Big or small, remember it is all about making the world a better place one act of random kindness at a time.

I don’t think I have mentioned in prior posts that I have the good fortune of working with children. However, even better than that is the fact that I don’t work with just any children, I work with high school age kids that have a few learning difficulties. This is an awesome job because they know what it means to struggle and often times, some of the toughest ones in the classroom are the kindest to the underdogs in the building. Let me share a couple of examples.

The other day we had a fire drill and as we headed down the three flights of stairs, I somehow got separated from a young lady that struggles with her vision. As the hundreds of students pushed down the stairwell, I was worried she was going to stumble. However, no sooner than I worried,  a young man also from my classroom did something amazing. This young man, turned around and handed the girl the back of his shirt. Slowly, her guided her down the rest of the stairs and out to the parking lot without incident. There he stood in the parking lot with this little bitty thing still holding tight to his shirt. He never asked her to let go or even indicated that he had done something so kind. He just stood there. I was so touched that I teared up.

Another incident several years ago still stays with me as well. I had this boy that was repeating his senior year and to put it mildly, he was the toughest case I had ever met. He had no parents, for all intents and purposes was homeless, but I knew he had something in him that nobody had gotten to yet. He became my mission that year. Throughout the year, somehow this boy began to care. Oh, he could still be a royal pain, but he started doing things like helping substitute teachers out when I was away or reading things to another student if I got busy across the room and they were struggling. He took kids under his wing that were overweight or that didn’t have friends and looked out for them in the cafeteria. In short, his heart began to shine. He graduated that year and people were amazed that he had made it.  I was amazed that nobody had noticed before what this young man was capable of being.

In short, don’t sell kids short in the game of kindness. They will engage in whatever is modeled for them. You don’t have to nag or preach to them, simply show them kindness and then stand back to watch the world become a better place for all of us.

I am sure many of you have read the children’s story called “Stone Soup” and are wondering what on earth that has to do with being kind.  I don’t know about anywhere else in the country, but here in Northern NY, it means a lot about random kindness.

Several local churches have started having what they call Stone Soup dinners. These dinners are free to anyone and everyone. It makes no difference if you have no money or if you are a millionaire just looking for someone to have dinner with while enjoying their company.

The dinners seem to be a hit and due to the church making it known that this isn’t simply a charity event, they seem to be bringing the communities closer. The dinners are anything from a full turkey dinner to meatloaf dinner to a pancake dinner depending on the week.

I think that organized religion should do more things like this and open their doors to everyone for something so heartwarming. The prices of everything are going up and people in the world are feeling more and more isolated, so what a great thing this concept could turn out to be for everyone. If you get a chance in your area, pass it on.

After all, the world would be a better place if we all found just a little more kindness.

I was reading a little newspaper here yesterday and it had a little blurb about a story from back in 1995. As I am always looking for heartwarming and inspirational stories, it caught my eye. Many of you have probably heard the story, but as for me, I must have been too busy worrying about college to pay attention to the kindness of others in the world.

Anyway, as the story has it, a man got his hands on a million dollar monopoly piece.  It appears that the where and how of getting this piece might have been shady, but that isn’t the heart of the story. So, he mailed this piece to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Can you imagine their reaction to receiving a million dollar donation?

Of course, when it came around to being possibly a stolen piece, you would think that takes the heart from the story. Until, the huge corporation Mcdonalds decided to honor the donation anyways in $50,000 payments each year until it is fully paid.  That put McDonalds on a new level in my eyes and that was truly an Act of Random Kindness.

Sometimes we need to remember that Acts of Random Kindness certainly aren’t apparent at the outset of something we do and they usually aren’t million dollar acts, but every one of them counts in making the world a better place to live. Have a great day!