World Kindness Day

stickywicket

Is, apparently, today.

Most of these 'days' I'm sure are created by card manufacturers to flog us their product but I rather like the sound of this one.

I also like the sound of current research which says that being kind helps us to live longer. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50266957

And I like the sentiments expressed here by Edgar Guest  (1881 - 1959)

We cannot say
What lips are praising us to-day.
We cannot tell
Whose prayers ask God to guard us well.
But kindness lives
Beyond the memory of him who gives.

[Deleted User]

Interesting, and heartening, article. Thanks for sharing.
I love this poem on the subject:

Small Kindnesses

By Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”


Ann

stickywicket

Wow!

Thank you, Mod Ann, not only for this lovely poem but also for introducing me to a poet I'd never heard of but will now keep returning to. I Googled her and read a few more of her poems. I love Bonfire Opera. That was, indeed, a kindness