It's WORLD KINDNESS DAY today!

[Flyvåpnet]

Please click on the image to view its full size.
'Reconciliation' by Josefina Alys Hermes de Vasconcellos (1904-2005)
St. Micheal's Cathedral, Coventry, West Midlands, England, U.K.

That's right, folks, today - 13 November 2010 CE - is World Kindness Day.  You can read all about it by following the link below:

World Kindness Movement - Welcome
The idea behind the World Kindness Movement (WKM) crystallised at a conference in Tokyo in 1997 when the Small Kindness Movement of Japan brought together like-minded kindness movements from around the world. The WKM was officially launched in Singapore on 18 November 2000 at the 3rd WKM Conference. The mission of the WKM is to inspire individuals towards greater kindness and to connect nations to create a kinder world.

Not only that, but you can download the official "press" kit here.  It's a compressed file.  So, go be kind right away - damn it!

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
— Plato

"Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame."
— Alexander Pope

"Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink - under any circumstances."
— Mark Twain

"For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone."
— Audrey Hepburn


Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

— Naomi Shihab Nye Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: The Eighth Mountain Press, 1994)

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[Kov]

I didn't think something like this would exist. Or even something like this needed to exist. It's a shame that people have dedicated this one day as a day to be kind and not everyday.

[Flyvåpnet]

Your point is well taken, Kov.  However, I'm thinking World Kindness Day is just a reminder of something we perhaps ought not take for granted - much like the purpose of Armistice Day / Remembrance Day / Veterans Day.  Plus, as we all know only too well, if any place could use more kindness it's the Internet!



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