It’s Cool to be Kind
by Debbie Ouellet
“What this world needs is a new kind of army — the army of the kind.”
— Cleveland Amory, author
Search the headlines at the dawn of this new decade and you’ll find countless examples of everything that’s wrong in the world today. The ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. Genocide in Dafur. A deadly earthquake in Haiti. Recently, a friend commented, “The 
whole world’s gone to hell and there’s nothing we can do about it.†The acceptance in that comment troubled me. It’s not the first time I’ve heard the sentiment voiced.
Is there nothing we can do about it? The question stayed with me for some time. Let’s face it: the problems plastered all over the evening news are so big that whole governments can’t seem to find a way to correct them. What hope does a solitary person have in making a change for the better?
Like other “truth seekers,” I decided to go looking for an answer — and found its genesis in the most unlikely of places: a calendar of holidays and observances. In January and February alone, there are four days dedicated to acts of kindness: January 21st, Hugging Day; January 24th, Compliment Day; February 11th, Make a Friend Day; and February 17th, Random Acts of Kindness Day. At some point in history, a person or organization decided to lobby to dedicate one day each year to bettering the life of other human beings. How? By being kind to them. And, why? Because there is something we can do about the state of the world. (more…)
month’s long silence. I think I haven’t been writing because what I actually want to write about is so different than what I used to write about. Doing justice to the hope and happiness I feel, simultaneous to the grief and anger, is, well, hard. Mostly I don’t try to do it justice. Do I have anything to offer someone I don’t know? Well, I don’t know. (more…)
