Whenever I think of the importance of kindness in our lives, I always recall the Dalai Lama’s comment that his religion is kindness.  I am constantly aware of how important it is for us to build up “kindness muscle”, the need to increase its presence in our current, challenging interpersonal world – locally and globally.  Acts and moments of kindness needn’t be grand or dramatic.  In fact, many moments of kindness go unrecognized except for the people involved, and then the person receiving the act of kindness may not even know it happened.  I’m thinking of a time I entered a store and happened to glance behind me and caught the revolving door before it hit a woman in the head.  She had turned to do something with her child and the door nearly banged into her.  She had no idea about what happened, because by the time she turned around the door had stopped moving and she was out of danger.  For me, this was one of those moments in the flow of daily life that keeps it interesting and allows us to choose kindness in even the smallest ways.

Another time, on a little bit more dramatic scale, a colleague left her purse in a cab when she came for a consultation appointment and didn’t realize it until the cab was long gone.  We began calling her cell phone, in the hopes the driver would hear it and answer.  After about 15 minutes, the driver did answer, saying that a young woman passenger, who used the cab after my colleague, saw the purse and heard the phone ringing.  She gave the pack to the driver, who then answered the phone.  After some discussion about timing and location, the cab driver promised to come back to my office about 25 minutes later and gave my colleague her purse.  He showed up right on time, and both my colleague and I were moved by this man’s kindness, by his generosity and honesty.  Nothing in the purse had been disturbed by anyone.  The fact that the driver took time out of his schedule to personally bring it back, instead of turning it in to lost and found later in the day, was not only kind but compassionate.  He understood how distressed someone would be to lose all their personal identification, money, keys, and phone.  It was a moving and nourishing experience, in that it involved the kindness of several people and really made a difference to my colleague.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to put kindness in the foreground of awareness – your own and that of others.  Pay attention to the small moments you spend helping others, especially to the seemingly-unimportant acts that really do make a difference in someone’s state of mind, or in the flow of their day.  Stopping to throw a piece of paper in a trashcan, rather than dropping it on the street, is an act of kindness toward all those around you.  Noticing that someone is waiting for a parking place and leaving as soon as you are able is an act of kindness to the person who needs the space. 

There are countless mundane and miniscule ways we can engage kindness in any given day and I invite you to more actively notice and name the ones that move into, through, and around your daily life.  As always, enjoy this experiment with a sense of curiosity and freedom from judgment about yourself and others.