One Act of Kindness at a Time

This time last year, we lost a relative in a car accident. Unfortunately, I didn't get to know who wonderful this person was except after he passed away. All the stories his friends (and even random people he helped) share about him are amazing. He made me realize how important it is to be mindful of the way we touch people’s lives.

So after getting over the shock, I decided to start a new habit. Every day I add to my to-do list a simple task that I have to accomplish: an act of kindness. It doesn't have to be huge (and it usually isn't). Sometimes it is just helping Mom around the house, checking on a friend who's going through a tough time, or simply holding my tongue when angry.

At the beginning I made the mistake of writing "be kind" in my daily to-do list, but since no one is nice all the time (or at least I know I'm not), this left me feeling rather guilty. So instead I choose to do only one simple act per day, because I believe that over time this one act can affect all the other acts one performs, till kindness becomes the norm. (No, I'm not there yet, but maybe someday, hopefully😃)

As it turns out, this has helped me more than it has helped others. Somedays the only good thing in my day can be the act of kindness I performed, and this leaves me less miserable than when I don't do anything at all 😄. And when I'm feeling down, I can choose to perform this act of kindness towards myself, because I know that if I can't help myself, I can hardly help anyone else.

That is a habit I've started doing in 2018, and hope to continue to do and cultivate for as long as I shall live.
What's a good habit you have started this year? And who inspired you to do it?

Inside Out

She asked me to divide my life into sections and rate every section on a scale from 1 to 10. So I started counting: 1. My family, 2. My friends, 3. My work, etc. After I finished, she asked me, “What about your relationship with yourself?” I looked at her for a moment then I said, “It’s a two-way relationship. You see, I am affected by all these sections and I affect them.” But this isn’t how I want it to be.

I remember watching the animation movie Inside Out and loving it so much. But I never really understood it till recently. In the final scene, Riley wasn’t able to return to her parents until she started looking inside herself. Throughout the movie, we see how she reacts to the outside world. This made sadness and anger takeover, till she couldn’t handle them anymore. So she decided to numb all her feelings. It was only on the bus when she started reflecting on her life and looking inside herself that she was able to act, instead of react.

I wanna live my life this way. To become an active participant instead of a passive recipient. I wanna take control of what is in my circle of influence, and accept everything beyond it. There was this TED talk for a fashion designer (or something like that) who told her story: how she went from wearing jumpers and jeans all the time to helping people choose the outfits that best represent them. She said that in the morning when she stands in front of her wardrobe she thinks, “How do I wanna show up in the world today?” I liked her the way she viewed a simple, daily choice; instead of thinking “what do I feel like?” and dressing accordingly (allowing the outside world to affect our choices), we should think instead about the impact we want to create (allowing our choices to affect the outside world).

In another TED talk, a woman was telling the story of her two failed marriages and how her experience has changed her. She tells how she went on a date lately and instead of thinking how to impress the guy she was going out with, she started thinking about how she feels about him. She wasn’t preoccupied with things out of her control. Some might think of this as selfishness, but it is not! I believe that if we don’t take good care of ourselves, we will never be able to add any meaning to the lives of those around us.

I told her that I’ve come to realize that we’re all gonna die and there’s nothing we can do about it. But instead of getting depressed over this fact, we can choose to do something while we are still here. We can “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” There’s nothing really to lose if we try, but if we chose not to, we’re gonna lose the time we wasted doing nothing. So we better as well live while we’re still alive.

The Curse of the Extraordinary

For so many years I’ve been having this conviction that it’s my duty to change the world. And that the only way to achieve this is to become an extraordinary person, some sort of a super human being. This led me to believe that I should always stand out, to become the best at whatever it’s that I’m doing. You can imagine the pressure this belief put on me. And it wasn’t the kind of pressure that motivates and pushes me to become a better person. Instead, it paralyzed me; I avoided doing great things out of the fear of not being able to excel at them. In fact, I’ve developed anxiety because of my constant pursuit of perfection.

But here’s what I’ve come to realize lately: after being angry at myself for a very long time for not achieving a breakthrough, I finally understood that it’s not my duty to change the world. Yes, it would be great if I did that by some chance, but it shouldn’t be my sole goal in life. All I have to do is try and make it a better place, not through extraordinary acts, but through little, genuine acts of kindness and authenticity.

By being true to who we really are and by seeking to understand the suffering of others and reaching out to help, we might not become extraordinary, but we surely gonna leave an impact in this world. And if we managed to be consistent in these acts of kindness and reducing suffering, we might one day change the world.