It’s easy to look at Friday the 13th with fear or superstition, but November 13th is reserved for something else entirely. Since 1998, many countries have used this date to observe World Kindness Day.
Kindness, in the spirit of the movement, is about more than just being nicer than normal to your friends and co-workers. Kindness is about reaching across boundaries that often keep us separate – race, age, social class – and doing something for someone we might not often take the time to embrace.
While it’s easy to find plenty to complain about on the Internet, one of my favorite trends is the viral sharing of images and stories that ‘restore our faith in humanity.’ Just when the bad news seems to pile up, I’ll see a story on Facebook of a random act of kindness that changed someone’s life, and I can’t help but smile.
This weekend, do something kind for someone else and snap a pic. Post it online, not with the hopes of getting on the Ellen Show, but just to inspire your friends. Imagine if everyone did something kind for a stranger – what a great world that would be. It’s not expensive, tiring, or even hard. And, as little Jayden Hayes taught us, seeing a big smile is often its own reward. For inspiration, here are some of my favorite acts of kindness, courtesy of BuzzFeed:
Pay it forward this weekend,
~Bob
