Joy in Zen Habits’ Great Post on Kindness

Leo at Zen Habits wrote a fantastic post yesterday entitled, “Faith in Humanity: How to Bring People Closer, and Restore Kindness.” At the end of it, he asked bloggers to write posts about how they intend to pay kindness forward. (In return, he’ll feature those bloggers in a post he’ll write called “The Bloggers of Kindness.”) His timing couldn’t be more perfect. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I can reach out and connect with more people and be more helpful within my own community. As such, this weekend I plan on volunteering at a nursing home to help them decorate for Christmas. Next weekend, I plan on volunteering at a local food shelter to help them inspect and sort donations.

This volunteering thing is new for me. Being an introvert, I usually invent a hundred reasons why I can’t “do it alone.” I’d rather volunteer with someone, and then I conveniently don’t ask around to see who’s available.

Not anymore! It’s becoming more and more important for me to step outside of myself and (as Leo pointed out by including Gandhi’s wonderful words) “be the change” I wish to see in the world.

Another idea that my cousin and I were discussing last week when I visited her in Seattle is microloans. There’s a site called Kiva that lets you donate money directly to needy individuals with unique small businesses in the developing world. Rather than giving money to a charity that often has high overhead and isn’t able to use 100% of what’s donated for the cause in question, Kiva offers a direct connection to those in need. What’s more, there’s a chance to see progress and witness, firsthand, how an amount as little as $500 could change someone’s life forever. I encourage anyone interested to at least check out the Web site. At some point, I think Oprah featured this on her show (which always gets me excited).

In any event, reading Leo’s post on kindness brought me great joy today, and I hope he’s inspired hundreds of thousands of people to pay kindness forward in whatever ways they can.