This is a guest post from Mark Hayward of the
MyTropicalEscape blog.
In a word: Kindness.
The Oxford Pocket Dictionary defines kindness as - the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.
It’s a simple concept in theory, but in reality it is an action that can sometimes be difficult to implement on a day-to-day basis.
Now I am not talking about the kindness that you might show to your spouse, family members, or friends; yes, of course that’s important.
Likewise, if you are going into your preferred religious institution or social gathering place it is easy to be kind to your peers and those who are familiar…however, how do you (we, me, US) treat those who might be different?
Specifically, I am talking about kindness toward strangers, particularly, those who might be different from us.
A little background
Today the sun is rising perfectly over Mt. Resaca as I sit here on the beach watching my dog dig for crabs in the sand. For me life is really quite good. However, yesterday a pipe burst in my house and we had gallons of water on our office floor, which took me the better part of two hours to clean up.
While undertaking the mindless act of soaking up water and wringing out the towels I got lost in my thoughts and began to reflect upon both the past and present state of the world.
- Why is there so much hatred?
- How come people have to suffer?
- What is one small change that I can implement to help make the world a nicer place to be?
Germination of this reflection
Typically I don’t think about such heavy subjects while I am working. However, two items that I have recently read, one a blog post and the other the beginning of a book, really struck a chord.
The book, The Years of Extermination, by Sal Friedlander covers the horrendous story of Nazi Germany and the Jews from 1939 to 1945. During the introduction of the book Friedlander starts off by telling the story of a photo that contains a young man, David Moffie, who was just awarded his degree in medicine in 1942 from the University of Amsterdam with all of the regular pomp and circumstance. He goes on to describe that in the photo you can see Moffie wearing a small palm sized star with the word Jood underneath.
The significance of the photo?
David Moffie was the last Jewish student at the University of Amsterdam under German occupation. According to Friedlander, shortly after graduation Moffie was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp.
Along with the book’s introduction as described above, the other item that got me contemplating about the world and kindness was a recent blog post about racism on Chris Brogan’s website.
In his recent missive Chris veered from his usual musings on social media, the net, and blogging and he decided to get people thinking with a subtle post about media and how it can be used to perpetuate racism. As one example in the post he mentioned the recent New Yorker cover featuring Barack Obama and his wife who are shown, as a caricature, in a not so positive light.
What does this have to do with kindness?
While this is certainly not a post about racism or the Holocaust, I feel that both subjects are about as far away as one can get on the spectrum from kindness, as both are intentionally meant to degrade, humiliate, and hurt people.
Within my life I have been quite fortunate and have had the opportunity to travel to many countries, live for extended periods in various foreign nations, and have made some remarkable friends along the way.
Unfortunately, while traveling and living overseas I have also been the target of someone’s dislike and animosity on more than one occasion simply because I was different. Whether it was my skin color, poor language skills, hairstyle, or whatever, I am not really sure.
Nevertheless, as I have recently turned 40 I have been asking myself and thinking about the following:
“Where does the seeming hate and vitriol of racism come from and what would the world be like if we were all a little bit nicer to each other?”
Surely most of us are not perfect, but I have also been thinking lately about the fact that it’s very hard to have hate in your being or in your actions if you are sincerely trying to be kind towards others.
This is not meant to come off as preaching, in fact, this is as much a note to myself as it is to the Zen Habits’ readers who choose to peruse this post.
So what have I decided to do?
Starting today, the simple act (hack?) that I am going to practice to try and make the world a better place to live in is:
Kindness
Why kindness? Because it’s free, easy to implement, and we can consciously choose to be kind to fellow humans.
How can you participate?
In true Zen Habits fashion, what I would like to see the reader’s do is quite simple - be kind to someone today, i.e. kindness it forward through your actions and interactions.
By myself the act of kindness is just one very tiny drop into the global bucket, but Leo has over 60,000 subscribers from all over the world!
Together, as a collective effort and united front, if we all decide to “kindness it forward” today, tomorrow, and the next day can you imagine the impact we could have?
Think about it, if even 30,000 of Leo’s subscribers go out and are kind to two extra people today that is 60,000 acts of kindness. Possibly, the 60,000 recipients of this kindness will then decide to be kind towards at least two other people during their day. That would spread the kindness movement to 120,000…and you get the idea.
Instead of listing out ways to be kind (e.g. saying hello, smiling, giving someone a ride, etc) I would like to turn this into a Zen Habit’s participatory exercise.
In the comments section as a way to help us to remember to be kind I thought we could list out 100 ways that our collective kindness might help a stranger and just possibly make the world a nicer place to be today.
I will start with the first five. Our kindness today might just:
- Save somebody’s life.
- Cause a person to be nice to someone else.
- Make someone smile.
- Ease someone’s stress.
- Help you to meet someone you might not normally come into contact with.
100.
Can we change the world? I don’t know.
But do we have the ability to make someone’s day a little better today because of a small act? Absolutely! And it all starts with kindness.
Mark Hayward owns a small business on the island of Culebra in the Caribbean. He blogs about lifestyle design, entrepreneurship, and travel at MyTropicalEscape and you can follow him on Twitter.
译文:
仁慈
总而言之:友好。
牛津袖珍字典把"友好"定义为一种友善的、慷慨的和体贴的品格。
在理论上，它是一个简单的概念，但是在现实中它却是一种很难天天坚持实施的行为。
现在我不是在谈论那种你对人的配偶、家庭成员或者朋友所表现出来的友好；当然，那种友好也重要。
同样，如果你进入你喜欢的宗教机构，或者社会成员聚集的地方，你好容易对你的同龄人或那些与你相识的人表现出友好。但是，你（我们）对那个不同的人又是如何对待的呢？
不同的是，我现在谈论的“友好”是对于那些陌生人而言的，特别是与我们不同的人。
我的一个小小的经历：
今天正在的太阳比平时好看很多，我坐在海滩上看着我的小狗在沙滩上挖洞捉蟹。我的生活过得很好。但是，我家里的水管突然破裂了，而且我们的办公室的地面上到处都是水，我们花了两个小时才它打扫干净。当我承受着这种让人全身湿透的不经意行为时,我已经失去意识了,并且,我开始思考世界过去和现在的状况。
为什么有这么多怨恨？
人们是如何受到伤害的？
通过我自己的行动可以让世界变得更美好的一个小变化是什么呢？
思考的产生：
通常，当我工作时，我不会考虑如此重大的科目。但是，我已经读过两个项目，一个是日志，另一个是一本书的开始开始部分，简直就是一个前奏。
这本由Sal Friedlander 写的名字叫《年代的产生》的书，其内容主要涉及从1939年到1945年德国纳粹党人与犹太人的惊人的故事。在介绍这本书的过程中，Friedlander开始讲述一张含有一个名叫David Moffie，1942年毕业于秩序井然、环境华丽的阿姆斯特丹大学并被授予医药学位的男青年。他继续描述说：在这张照片里，你可以看到Moffie穿着一件小的手掌大的在下面写着“Jood”的星星。
这张照片的重要性是什么呢？
在被德国人占领期间，David Moffie 是阿姆斯特丹大学最后一犹太人学生。根据Friedlander介绍的，Moffie大学毕业不久就被派到奥斯比次集中营。
与这本书以上一起描述的，当时另一个让我思考世界与仁慈的项目，是目前在Chris Brogan’s 网站上关于种族主义的公告。
克里斯在他最近的文章里，他改变了他平常对于社会传媒、网络与博客的惊动人心的思考，并且他决定让人们思考关于媒体的敏感性的公告,和如何将它运用到种族主义永远存在中去。正如一个在他提及到的公告中的一个例子，最近在纽约时报中谈及到关于 Barack Obama 的专栏，他的妻子以一个讽刺画面展现在封面中，并没有充分的根据。
这与“友好”有什么联系呢？
然而，这当然不是一个关于种族主义或大屠杀的公告，我觉得这两个都关于人们不能在“仁慈”的范围内可以找到的话题，因为它们都是有意使人堕落、让人感到侮辱并使人受到伤害的话题。
在我的一生中，我感到非常幸运并有机会游历过很多国家，在不同的国家生活过相当长的一段时间,并且一路上结交了一些出名的朋友.
不幸的是,当我在海外游历和生活的时候,曾经在很多地方只因为我与别人不同,而成了一些人讨厌和憎恶的对象。是否是因为我的肤色、语言表达能力差、发型，或者是不管是什么原因呢，我真的不知道。
尽管如此，随着我的年龄已经到了40岁，我一直都在问我自己并思考关于以下的问题：
外貌上的憎恨和种族上的讽刺是从哪里来的呢，如果我们人与人之间一点友好都没有这个世界将会变成什么样子呢？
的确，我们大多数人都不是完美的，但是后来我一直在想一个这样的事实：如果你在努力对其他人仁慈的话，那么在你的言行中是很难有憎恨的。
实际上，在讲道的时候，这样的事实不一定会出现。对于我来说明这就像是一个笔记，正如那些选择阅读这个公告的Zen Habits'读者一样。
那么，我已经决定了做什么呢？
从今天开始，开展一个我将要努力实践并使这个世界变成一个让人们生产得更好的地方的行动。
友好
为什么要友好呢？因为它实行起来自由和容易，并且我们能够有意识地对我们的同伴选择友好的行为。
你如何能参与？
在真正的Zen Habits 潮流中，我想要看到读者们的所做的非常简单——就是今天对人们友好，比如通过你的行为和人与人之间的行为来对人们友好。
通过我自己来对别人友好的行为,正如大海中的一滴水那么渺小,但是Leo拥有来自全世界的捐款人超过60,000人。
随着我们共同努力和不断向前发展，如果我们所有的人今天都决定对人友好，那么能想象到得明天和将来我们给世界带来的影响吗？
请想一下，假如今天Leo的30,000捐款人每个都在外面两个额外的人施予友好，那么就有60,000个友好行动。这个60,000受到人们友好对待的人，在他们的日常生活里每个人也将会对至少两人施予友好的行为,那么这种友好行动就发展到120,000个……依此类推，你可以想像一下会产生什么样的效果。
与其列出友好的各种方式（例如对别人打招呼，微笑，让座等等），我还不如将这些友好的方式变成Zen Habit的与人分享的实践中。
在这种作为一个可以帮助我们记得对别人友好的方法的注释中，我想我可以列出100种在我们共同的努力下可以帮助陌生人并且可能让今天的世界变得更美好的友好的方式。
下面我将列出友好的前5种方式，我们今天的友好可能只是：
救别人的性命。
使人产生对别人友好的行为。
让人微笑。
减轻别人的压力。
帮助你和那些你不能经常与他们联系的人见面。
……
我们能改变世界吗？我不知道。
但是，今天因为一个小小的行为，我们有能力使别人的日子过得好一点吗？当然可以。并且这都是从友好开始的。