National Random Acts of Kindness Day

I like this idea. The world could use more kindness. If you google "random acts of kindness," you'll find all sorts of ways to befriend people and spread around some kindness. However, I would hope that people don't need a list of ideas, but they could randomly show acts of kindness on their own. It should become a habit - the way we live.

The phrase "random acts of kindness" is attributed to Anne Herbert. She wrote it on a placemat in Sausalito, California, in 1982 to combat the phrase she kept hearing, "random acts of violence." She published a book entitled, Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty in 1993, which shared stories of people showing kindness randomly. 

"Pay it forward" is another version of random acts of kindness. Here, if someone does something nice for you, you do something nice to someone else to keep it going. Not too long ago, there was a book and movie by this name. However, historically the concept has been around much longer.

Christianity, Judaism, and most other religions teach kindness, not just as random acts, but as the thing to do. The Jewish concept of a mitzvah is commonly used to mean a good deed or act of kindness.  Judaism teaches that the world is built on kindness. Jesus also set this type of example for Christians to follow.

So, let's all observe "Random Acts of Kindness Day" today. But we should not do this for just one day. Let's commit to do them each and every day of the year and see how much better we can make our world.

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