Did we forget that one small, thoughtful gesture can make someone else's day? What happened to respect, caring and mainstream cultural values of kindness? I sense an immense growing acceptance of self-absorbed and self-serving attitude and to trash each other seems to be the norm and ok. Some people are so rude these days in regard how they treat others. Is it so hard to be nice?

image source pinterest chosen by Sophie Akkineni

Maybe I am just getting old but more bullies are on the rise and kindness is a lost virtue in a fussy, weird sporadic society. I see lots of young and also old opportunists, lacking empathy. They insult, gossip, patronise or take advantage, even intimidate and harm others. I have noticed that the generation of my daughter is much more about "Me", I see more hardness and less compassion in people than I used to in my younger days. I might be wrong. 

“I can say anything I want, behave anyway I want, and do whatever I want and you need to accept me this way.”  This is often accompanied by, “If you don’t like it…it’s not that I need to change…you need to work on your issues.”  Yikes.......Doesn’t that feel yuck? 

Obviously it is much easier to project anger, blame and even rage onto others. We need to create, build real friendships and harmony again.....supportive communities, help where its needed.  

Sarah Konrath is an assistant research professor at the Center for Group Dynamics in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. She sees expressions of kindness as actions that require empathy — the ability to identify with the feelings of another. “People born after 1980 are more likely to score higher in narcissism and lower on empathy. It zeroes in on something going on in the early 80s.” She thinks it is significant that the period was marked by rapid changes in technology, from the increasing popularity of cable television to the invention of video games. “People began to spend much more time in solo interactions with technology.” 

She also writes; "Imaginatively taking on another person's thoughts and identifying with their emotions are two habits at the core of empathy. In fact, empathy is not a fixed trait like having brown eyes or long fingers. Empathy is instead a delicate cocktail blending assorted elements of inborn aptitude, social conditioning, personal history, and practice and motivation.The ability to empathize is like a muscle capable of growth, atrophy, disability, and even regeneration. People have different innate capacities for building certain muscles, just as we have different incentives for being empathetic and experiences in honing our skills to empathize. For some people, empathy comes easily and naturally; for others, concerted effort is required to stretch our imaginations beyond ourselves."

Let's practise kindness, a behavior marked by ethical characteristics, a pleasant disposition, the concern for others and remember that we will rise together by lifting others. 

But if there’s no wall, there’s no need for fitting the window, or the latch.  ~ Rumi 

No act of kindness is ever wasted!

This is my goal for this coming year to get out of my way and touch, hug and speak to people to find out more about them through their eyes, smiles and stories told.

I am reading lots of poetry in those past weeks to keep my mind occupied, my sanity in a positive balance. I've never been very interested in politics but since those mad " TrumpTurdDays " started, I am very confused and find myself with anxious and semi sleepless nights. I have to admit that I am worried what kind of future our children will have to face. I am also thinking how lucky I am to grow up the way I did. My generation had so much more freedom.

Book Source: The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement

KINDNESS by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952 

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. 

"This is the potential that the human race needs to be aiming instead of being a damn virus."

Enjoy the super cute clip what inspired me to write this up, my mood today. Friendship and trust at its absolute best inbetween animals & humans.

Yours 

Mammasitta