The Power of Kindness

This week is National Random Acts of Kindness Week.

Small acts of kindness come in all shapes and sizes. As bus and train commuters, there are plenty of ways to be kind – to the stranger standing next to you, to the bus driver, to your seatmate.  

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation  was created in 1995 as a resource for people committed to spreading kindness. You’ll find ideas, lesson plans, projects and workplace resources at its Web site. Its goal is to inspire people to practice kindness.

The Dallas Morning News had an article about strangers practicing random acts of kindness and recounted the story of a man who complimented a woman on her perfume as she passed him in the grocery store. She took a few steps, then walked back to the stranger and hugged him. She said she had just been told she had cancer and was wandering around in a fog. Read the full story here.

Kindness doesn’t have to cost a cent to be powerful. Dash an e-mail to someone to thank her for something she did for you.  Hold a door open for someone who needs extra help. Almost every time I ride the train, I notice men offering a seat to older women, pregnant women, or someone who looks like he or she needs to sit. It’s not always the business suit offering the seat – sometimes it’s a teen-ager in baggy sweats.  

Here’s what leading thinkers have said about kindness. Goethe: “Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.”

Blaise Pascal: “Kind words do not cost much. Yet, they accomplish much.”

Albert Schweitzer: “Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.”

Read more quotes here from people who understood the value of kindness. As a commuter, do you have a story of a random act of kindness you’d like to share?