Kill Them With Kindness

You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile on your face, and show the world all the love in your heart,

Then people gonna treat you better.

You’re gonna find, yes, you will,

That you’re beautiful, as you feel.

—Carole King

 

I can hear my mom singing those words as I write this now. In fact, I have heard her voice or pictured her singing/dancing many times lately. A car commercial with a catchy tune will come on and I can picture her dancing to it. Perhaps it is a sign from her. The song “Have I told you lately that I love you?” popped into my head randomly and I could also picture my mom singing that. Perhaps not much of a random coincidence at all.

It is an interesting concept, the one of being kind and how it can spread. This morning,  my dad ran into a lady at Starbucks with a “Be Kind” pin on. He had seen this quote in a morning reading and mentioned it to the lady. She ended up giving him the pin and told him a story about how the Be Kind movement was started in Napa Valley, California by girls riding the subway to school and noticing nobody was smiling or friendly on the train.

That interaction of kindness between my dad and a lady at Starbucks shows one person being kind spreads to others. Being kind to others or vice versa makes us feel good and in turn, makes the other feel good. That act of kindness is one that will hopefully spread far beyond the original interaction.

This reminds me of the movie Pay it Forward, where a kid has an idea of spreading good deeds. It ends up making the news and spreads much further than he thought. Although it is a somewhat sad ending with him being killed, droves of people showed up to remember him at his house at the end of the movie. One act of kindness of him helping out a homeless man who was in trouble had touched thousands by the end of the movie.

Back to the beginning where I spoke about my mom. Clearly, anyone who you meet would say she tried to treat everyone she met with kindness. That, in turn, rubbed off on me, my family, and far beyond. There wasn’t a situation she didn’t have a song to brighten the mood. That is how she is remembered fondly by so many, as someone who went about life singing.

Although I don’t go about life with a song for every instance, I try to look at the positives of things. I hope others can see that I do as well. As much as there aren’t any real positives to be taken out of someone dying, I can take solace in the fact that my mom touched so many people with her positivity, smiles, and songs.

She truly did get up every morning with a smile on her face and showed the world love.

The Moments “In Between”

Last night, while taking a hot shower after playing basketball for a while, I thought of how relaxing and soothing it was. That shower wouldn’t have been so relaxing had I not played basketball for a couple hours. I had written a post on Facebook about that a while back as I contemplated a concert from the night before while sitting by the water on a morning in Boston. There, I thought of a similar thing: you can’t have exciting moments without more “normal” ones.

The moments of exertion playing basketball led to moments of relaxation when showering. You may think you always want those more exciting moments, but is that really true? With those exciting moments all the time, you would likely be exhausted. Conversely, if you think you want to rest all the time, you will quickly see how boring it can be to lounge around all day.

Take it from someone who has seen both ends of the spectrum to the extreme with periods in my life where I was vibrant with energy and traveling around/going to events all the time and yet also periods where I was very depressed and did basically nothing. I learned you can have too much of a good thing the hard way.

As much as a shower may not seem like the most thrilling moment in life, those are the types of moments that need to be appreciated just as much if not more than the moments that may be perceived to be more exciting. There are far more of those “mundane” moments than there are the exciting ones. Even if you are a singer, for example, who goes on tour and has exciting moments frequently for periods, there are periods of downtime where you are maybe not as active such as travel, periods in between albums, etc.

The build-up is important.

As I look forward to an exciting event coming up on Friday, the release of Halsey’s new album (I have stated before how big a fan of her I am on this blog many times), I have tried to tell myself to enjoy the moments leading up to it. After all, once it is out, it is out and that exciting moment of it being out for the first time will eventually fade.

Now, this isn’t to sound negative and say you shouldn’t look forward to big moments. However, it is a post to remind me more than anything to appreciate those more dull moments in life.

In the end, is a hot shower as exciting as a thrilling concert? Not really. Yet, that doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate it at the moment. It may not be as thrilling, but you will (I hope at least) “attend” more showers than concerts in your lifetime.

Therefore, those everyday times in your life which make up more than the thrillers can be looked at as not so boring at all. They are necessary.

The whole point I am trying to get at here is if you spend your life waiting for that next big event, you will miss the “in-betweens”.

You could look forward to the next big concert or look forward to brushing your teeth with great fervor. Although that may be an exaggeration, it is a necessary activity of life. Many people don’t actually look forward to brushing their teeth or a lot of times showering, etc. but they are important to living the best life you can.

I suppose this is more of an expansion or deeper analysis of the last blog post I wrote. There, I talked about appreciating the smaller moments but it didn’t dawn on me as much why they are so important. I brought this idea to life more I think with more concrete examples of the showers vs. concerts for one.

As an aside, I have struggled with something that is pertinent to this blog as I think about it. I have sometimes stopped myself from writing thinking that I didn’t have an exciting enough topic to write about. If I hadn’t gone to an event recently or nothing exciting happened in my life, I would hesitate to write and therefore it has been a bit since I have written.

Perhaps this is an exercise in me reminding myself to enjoy the less thrilling blog posts a bit more. There, more likely than not will be more mundane blog posts than ones about big events like the Jingle Ball. However, that doesn’t mean I should let that be a barrier to consistently writing.

I guess I’ll close with this as a message to myself: If you wait until you’re inspired to write about something exciting, you won’t write much at all.