Some favorite people -- okay, my daughter and daughter-in-law -- recently posted a link to a heartwarming story from "Prank it Forward," about a waitress who clearly deserved some good luck getting a LOT of it from her co-workers and friends: $1,000 cold cash, two airline tickets to Hawaii, a dream job and a new car. It was hard to follow without laughing and crying all at once.
Clicking around for the source revealed the originating site heavy into pranks of all sorts, apparently good-natured ones even if not always winding up life-changing good news for the prankee. The site originators seem committed to bringing moments of joy, and if there's anything this world needs right now it's moments of joy.
Clicking farther led to another site surely worth visiting, DoSomething.org. Over at DoSomething.org, members are doing things like collecting jeans for homeless kids, recycling cans to save the planet, or campaigning to stop bullying. You have to love the DoSomethingers. Their avowed purpose is "to make the world suck less." This writer, unfortunately, can't join them, as their members are between 13 and 25 and everybody over 25 falls into the category of Old People, in whom they are pointedly not interested. And who can blame anyone under 25 for that?
But it's still the random acts, those small kindnesses anyone can do and no one organized, that most warm this writer's heart. The little things: picking up the neighbor's overturned trash can, handing the grocery checker a $20 for the food stamp buyer behind you in line, sending a snail-mail note to a perfect stranger in a nursing home and sharing roses from your garden.
Catherine Stern, co-founder, with Carole Mahoney, of Project Grace and herself an act of kindness, shared one such story about a Project Grace participant. The young family had just moved into a new house in a new community when their three-year-old was diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of cancer, forcing them to spend long hours driving to the hospital many miles distant. They were faced with juggling care for their other young children alongside the overwhelming needs of the sick child. Every time the exhausted parents pulled into the driveway of their new home they worried about what the neighbors must think of their unkempt yard, overgrown with weeds and scraggly grass. But one day, coming home after another exhausting few days at the hospital, they were astonished to see their front lawn fully landscaped, grass mowed and flowers planted by unseen neighbors who had somehow learned what was happening with the new family in the community.
Which is what kindness is all about -- the community of humankind.