OPPORTUNITIES FOR KINDNESS: YES, WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
Way back in college the mother of my then girlfriend asked me: “Rick, when you graduate, what do you want to become?”
I told her that after I received my Bachelors degree I wanted to become independently wealthy. She asked me how I planned to obtain this goal?
“I haven’t worked out all of the details yet. But when I do you will be one of the first to know,” I assured her. Well, she wasn’t so assured by our colloquy.
By then I had read many novels by Charles Dickens, and it often seemed that in the last chapter of his books some wealthy uncle would come forward and bestow a small fortune on the young hero. However, by my junior year, I realized on a very fundamental level that no relative was likely to place a king‘s ransom in my hands when I graduated.
So I understood that I had to come up with a Plan B. Well, this was rather easy since I wanted to become the next great American playwright or novelist. I had read that F. Scott Fitzgerald was just 23 years old when his blockbuster debut novel— This Side of Paradise — was first published.
However, I was soon overtaken by a major dose of reality, and I realized that I needed to move on to a Plan C. At the time I was a reporter and an editor for the school newspaper, and so I just decided to go into journalism. Fortunately, I was hired by Fairchild Publications. Their most famous newspaper was Women’s Wear Daily. I did not write about fashion, and instead they put me on the economic beat.
I was blessed to have a Southern news editor, whose first name was Buck. He grounded into me what was and what was not considered to be news. By its very definition news is the exception to the rule. “Dog bites man” is not news. “Man bites dog” is news.
However, the irony is that when we start watching or reading a lot of news, we start to believe that the exception to the rule is the norm. We start to believe that the human race is going to the dogs, and that everything is falling apart.
C.S. Lewis
Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of people are decent, want good things for their children, and want to better their lives along the lines of a not too different moral code. I believe that C.S. Lewis did an excellent job of presenting this condition — and he was able to do it even during the worst of the Battle of Britain during World War II.
But this is not end of the story. As people fall into this negativity vortex, they often start to believe that they can’t do anything about anything. They appear to be in a hopeless situation.
Well… BOULDER DASH! NONSENSE! There is always the opportunity to do something which can profoundly change things around….And that thing centers on OPPORTUNITIES FOR KINDNESS!
A recent post by the spiritual author, Carol Kuykendall, really drove this point home for me. Carol is the author of many books including Give Them Wings, which helps parents raise children who learn how to stand on their own two feet.
A little while ago, Carol found herself praying for a parking space. “I felt guilty saying those words. I have friends who think people who pray for parking spaces are wasting God’s time. But I was desperate. My husband, Lynn, had an appointment at this hospital, and we knew the importance of being there on time,” she noted. Lynn had recently experienced a health challenge via a stroke.
Carol circled around two hospital parking lots, but there was not even a single parking space for Lynn and her. She drove out to the two remaining hospital parking lots that were further away from the medical center. But once again, there were no parking spaces.
“As I rounded the final corner of that lot, I saw a man wearing a bright orange vest getting out of his pickup. He looked official, so I rolled down my window and asked if he could suggest where I might find a parking space. I told him all four lots were completely filled,” Carol said.
“Probably on the streets,” he said to Carol, pointing in the opposite direction of the medical center. But then, the man said something else to Carol: “Wait…You take my spot and I’ll go find one.” Carol was about to stop the man, but he was already in his truck, backing out, and waving to Lynn and her.
She said, “Thank you!” Then she thought: “Who does that?” She answered her own question: “An angel or Jesus dressed as a kind hospital workman who answers prayers.”
Then Carol said a second prayer, “Lord, I want to celebrate this act of kindness by passing on the gesture. Please give me the opportunities.”
Let me tag on to Carol’s prayer: “Dear Spirit, thank you for giving us many opportunities for kindness. Help us to rise to the occasions. Also, help us to remember that what we see and read on the news is most often the exception to the rule, and with the Divine Spark within we are never helpless. And for this and so much more we say thank you and amen… and amen.”
