Blogging Your Blessings/ Celebrate World Kindness Day, November 13, 2017!!

You're seen those bumper stickers, the ones encouraging you to commit “random acts of kindness?” What they can’t tell you in that little space is how performing those acts can be a way of transforming yourself. When you begin to focus on extending kindness toward others, you’ll feel more kindness coming toward you. Not only will you make someone else’s day better, you’ll be surprised at how well yours improves. It’s rather like the “secret Santa” gift exchange that many offices and families adopt during the weeks leading up to Christmas. There is delight when you do something for another while keeping your identity a secret. When you watch a person receiving a surprise gift, you see their face change, the eyes open wide with delight, a smile bursting into a grin, and laughter erupting. They appear to feel sheer joy at the unexpected. The old adage is true: “It is in giving that we receive.” The other part of the quote, which is by a San Francisco writer named Anne Herbert, is often left out: “and [practice] senseless acts of beauty.” I received a text the other day from a friend who had taken a picture with her phone of a sidewalk outside the coffee shop where she works in San Francisco. Someone had written “It’s a beautiful day” with colored chalk on the sidewalk and adorned it with butterflies and hearts. That, to me, is a senseless act of beauty. Think how many people walked on the sidewalk that day and smiled at the childish scrawl reminding them of the beautiful day.