Kindness Warriors

"Gratitude is a twofold love; love coming to visit us, and love running out to greet a welcome guest.." ~ Henry van Dyke

The person that I am, I rarely find myself sitting back and watching life pass by. I choose to take a step forward and do something about small things around me. Though we often choose to stay quiet about the little things that we do, sometimes I feel sharing with the world somewhere inspires other people to do something similar, if not same.

I enjoy reading a lot. Current favourite is positive psychology, and a theme kept showing up time and again. The whole idea of 'Random Acts of Kindness'. If you ask me, I'd choose not to tag normal things as something extraordinary, but when we see the immense hatred and voice that media spews, I feel these seemingly small gestures need to be highlighted in their own little ways.

I have grown up in a household, that has always offered food and water to anyone who visited our home. May it be a guest, or a vendor or even a sweeper on the street. I have seen my parents and grandparents always going over and above doing things for people around them. Needless to say, some genes were ought to pass on. I probably cannot sit still when I see that my jogging track is being littered, and that's when I realised what I've been doing all my life was called 'plogging'. A fancy name, for collecting trash during a walk, hike or a jog. Beautiful concept and something I proudly do, because one chocolate wrapper less, makes my neighbourhood cleaner. The compounding effect of such small insignificant actions can have lasting effect.

I enjoy my birthdays a lot. Well, that's an understatement. I am bonkers about doing something exciting and new every year, while I plan blood donation camps over a decade now, I remember a particular year, when I decided to try something novel. My close friends are scattered all over the globe, and I wanted to include all of them in my madness. Needless to say, send some ripples of good vibes and positivity on my special day. I also share my birthday with 3 other friends, who were the first ones I invited to join me in my (self-proclaimed) magnificent idea!

My idea was, to initiate a Random Acts of Kindness drive on 1st December throughout the day in different cities across the world. The idea was to create a ripple effect and to see for real what one person can really do?! Remember the butterfly effect? When you come to think of it, it also meant, this day became one of the longest for me. Rising in Melbourne and setting in Los Angeles, we covered quite a few cities in these 36 long hours! Surely more than what we had expected. More than a hundred people participated, my friends, and their friends in over fifteen cities. Some went out by themselves, some in a merry group. People from different colour and ethnicities joined together, beyond my wildest imagination.

I had put a Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram status/story asking if anyone would like to be a part of a sort of social initiative that I had on my mind. Friends joined in from different cities, and we kept going crazy over WhatsApp messages. To a point of overwhelming responses and pictures of my friends at work. I simply wanted to go out and hug them and thank them from the bottom of my heart to join my craziness!

To have a common thread to the whole thing, and also add a spark of joy to the ones who would be going out and making others' day, I shared YouTube videos of making an origami heart, that can hold a note inside it. My friends had a ball of a time to create these colourful hearts, and enjoyed this process of writing inspiring positive affirmations inside each of the heart. Some of my friends got creative and used colourful post it notes and stuck them at places where people could find them.

These hearts were kept at random places around their neighbourhood/city in their course of day, for strangers to find them, and well hoping to make their day with a smile, and add to some advance Christmas cheer! I added smiley badges/pins that they can put on their bags or clothes. An overall attempt to remotely sprinkle some stardust around the world and spread some positive vibes. I'm sure we all need it at some point in time. Belonging is an innate need, and even though virtually, we all belong to some vision together.

I was literally dancing all day long, receiving photos, videos and beautiful messages from my friends, who enjoyed the process the most, and celebrate my birthday from afar. All in all, the day went amazingly well! I'm sure we all had amazing experiences while executing these tiny lovely acts. Sometimes while making someone else's day, we don't realise, it is our day that is being made.

If you feel called to join in something similar in near future, do feel free to reach out. I sure have a plan already ready! 💖