Week Forty-two: Acknowledging the Kindness of Others

I was talking with someone the other day, and she mentioned how happy it makes her to practice kindness. Since taking it on as part of her daily life, she has found that opportunities continually present themselves to be kind. She especially likes the way that practicing kindness offers her choice points many times throughout the day – choices points that have to do with letting go of irritation at the person who bumped into her on the street, or annoyance with the clerk at the counter who takes longer than she would like to respond to her presence.

After our conversation, I found myself thinking about all the kindnesses that come to us each day from others. The woman who tailors my clothes and takes in my dry cleaning is particularly kind. Anytime I have a need for something in a hurry, she makes sure to get it to me. Am I any different from any other customer? No. Is she kind to all of us? Yes. Because of her commitment to service, I constantly acknowledge her kindness and appreciate it deeply. The same goes for the person on the street who picked up a glove I dropped one morning and made sure I got it back. Or the woman in the park who recently began to smile at me as we pass in the morning. We’ve seen one another for a number of years now, but something has shifted and now we smile a good morning greeting. I appreciate that she reached out first. Then, there was the man on a bus recently who called out to someone who was going out the back door that they had dropped their wallet. If this man hadn’t been kind enough to make sure he got the other person’s attention, someone would have had a very challenging discovery to find their wallet gone when they next needed it.

What I’ve noticed over time is that when we look for kindness, we’re likely to find it, just as when we look for danger we tend to see it around every corner. We’ve explored generating kindness recently, and for this week’s experiment, I’d like to invite you to explore your experience of receiving kindness from others. The first step is to notice small, seemingly-insignificant acts of kindness that come your way. They may be so subtle that, until now, you’ve overlooked them, like when someone in a store takes the time to look you in the eye and say “thank you” as they hand you your change. This experiment is sort of like putting on a “kindness lens”, so that you pay particular attention to moments of kindness that may, before, have seemed neutral – just another interaction along the way. Then, notice how you feel as you pay attention to small acts of kindness that come your way. Often, there’s a beautiful ripple effect, where kindness begets kindness, and you find yourself both remembering to be kind more of the time, and feeling more nourished by all the kindness you now notice comes your way throughout the day.

Click Here for Other Weeks in This Series:

Home Page