Thanksgiving is a day in which we should be thankful for the lives we live, the friends we keep, and the family who loves us. Let's also remember that our founding fathers bequeathed us a free country, and for that, we should be extremely grateful, respectful, and determined to keep it free.
Let's not forget random acts of kindness. But wait a minute. Those acts of kindness aren't random, they are intentional. To set us straight, Bob Brody has this in the Wall Street Journal: Random Acts of Kindness? Hardly. Subhead: The usual phrase has it wrong. Niceness can only be intentional.
There he provides an explanation and some examples of intentional acts of kindness, such as this one:
Why do we call acts of kindness random when they are so clearly intentional? Are acts of kindness any more random than acts of cruelty? The answer is no.
It’s 6:30 in the morning and raining hard. A woman caught in the downpour without an umbrella ducks inside a coffee shop. “I have to get to the hospital,” she says to a stranger. She’s a nurse due for a 7 o’clock shift. “See those people over here?” the stranger asks, nodding to a mother, father and two children. “They just pulled up in a car. You could ask for a ride.”
The nurse is skeptical, but the stranger is encouraging. When she finally goes over to ask for a lift, the family instantly agrees, and out the door they go. As they pull away, the nurse waves goodbye to the stranger, smiling.
Though rare, such flashes of empathy and altruism—of going above and beyond ourselves, setting aside, if only momentarily, our personal wants and needs—do occur. In Hebrew, this kind of good deed is called a mitzvah, literally meaning “commandment,” as in thou shalt be kind. Those who perform mitzvahs are in Yiddish called mensches, defined as people of integrity and honor.
Well said. May we all endeavor to be kind to one another and be thankful for the opportunity.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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1:15 PM 11/22/2017
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