Acts
of Kindness
“What
wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”
Jean
Jacques Rousseau
I'm
beginning to think we need an occasional disaster, if for no other
reason than to bring out the best in people. Over the last two days,
while the deep south has been locked down by freezing conditions, I
have heard of more random acts of kindness than in the last five
years put together. My daughter-in-law's sister was taken into a
total stranger's home overnight when she had to abandon her car on
the highway. People walked down the frozen interstate taking food and
drink to those stranded in their cars. Folks were out on 4-wheelers,
the only vehicles that could move over the ice, ferrying people they
had never met to safety. One of those people was a woman in
labor—they got her out of gridlock, to an emergency vehicle in time to have her baby! It is
quite heartwarming to see what we humans are capable of when push
comes to shove.
The
question is, why aren't we like that all the time? One wonders why we
need a natural disaster to drive us into kindheartedness. My sons
and I walked a mile or so yesterday to check on Ian's car where he
had left it in a parking lot. The streets were still too icy and
treacherous to risk driving on. In the hour it took us to make the
trip, we saw three people being helped by total strangers to get
their cars out of the middle of the road—three guys even pushed an
old Pontiac—one of those “land-yacht” types from the old days,
up an icy, slippery hill. It was truly touching.
I
want us to remember this time, not as a terrible calamity that
'coulda-shoulda' been predicted, and that someone ought to be blamed
for, but as an opportunity to try out our kindness skills. From
everything I saw with my own eyes, and heard on the local news, we've
still got them. We just need to practice them more often.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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