Kindness Deeds

 

A book published in 1993 entitled “Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty”  made a plea for people to practice kindness as the book’s title implies. Groups were organized to find ways of applying kindness in daily lives. This is good, I thought—as long as there were people out there to do those things—not me

Then an event rattled my passive-aggressive attitude. I  was eating my breakfast in the dining room of the retirement facility where I lived when another resident tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Here, you dropped this.” It was my Covid 19 mask which had fallen to the floor when I removed it to eat. I mumbled a half-hearted thanks, and in a few minutes reality awakened me. That person walked nearly the whole length of the dining room to pick up and hand me my mask. It is hard to imagine anything that meets the idea of (random acts of kindness” better than this.

Another thought followed; I remembered from distant past the expression, “Kindness begets kindness.” A little research revealed that this statement is often attributed to Sophocles, fifth century B.C.  playwright. And it seems to be a truism lasting all those centuries to the present time. it suggested that the desire or willingness to perform acts of kindness can be applied or strengthened by repeated exposure to kind acts of others. Certainly, a parent’s kind act will pass on to a child, a teacher’s to a student, a supervisor’s to a worker, and even an officer’s to a soldier’s.

I have always been impress by a story coming from the Battle for Gallipoli in Turkey in World War 1.The British, French, Australians and New Zealanders fought the Turkish/Ottomans with no signifant advances but heavy casualties. During the battle, a Turkish soldier was seen carrying an enemy soldier to a place for help for his wounds. A statue in Gallipoli memorializes this events.

 

Gillopli Monument

 

We can only speculate about the many people in this soldier’s life that implanted this idean of kindness acts—parents, siblings teachers, clergy other soldiers, to name a few.