[December discussion]: Random acts of kindness

[Turin Turambar]

I always looked at it as there is nothing wrong with doing random nice things for people as long as you don't try to either lord it over them later or use it to imply you are better than others cause you did this or that. Call it selfish or whatever I say we should all be as nice to each other as possible.

[Kaylee]

1) Coolest random act of kindness...There was a story I heard about on the news. There was this girl who had a friend in the military and didn't want him to feel lonely over the holdiays. She asked him for names of fellow soldiers and she and her friends wrote them letters to cheer them up. She then told local busniesses and shcools of what she was doing and they added to the letters.

 

2) Is it selfish to commit a random act of kindness...Yes and no. It really depends on the motivation behind it. If you're doing it to make them happy, for no benefit of your own, then no I don't think so. Some people really have a big heart and just don't like to see others down, they genuinley want to help. Some even prefer to do so unnoticed (behind the scenes) so as to not be known keeping it about the reciever. If you're doing it to gain anything, then yes. I"m sure we are all guilty, in one way or another, of having done at least one selfish act of kindness.

 

It's an interesting question because selfishness and kindess don't really go together. If the reciever knows you have selfish motives, as an example, then they may feel slighted by the act...as if they were a pawn in your self-help agenda.

[Ithillian Turambar]

I raffled my car off for charity and sold the majority of my real paper books too. I must confess that part of my motivation was just that I needed to be rid of them, for various reasons,and it seemed like a good way to do it. Still quite a bit of money was raised so it was all good.

 

On the other side, when our local nursery was closing down and I was was running a campaign to keep it open. I went on the news a couple of times to put forward our case and someone I have never met watched and said she saw how unhappy we were and sent a present for both of our boys which was very kind. Now that was interesting, because our nursery was one of the few that the council actually decided to give funding too, but the funding had to go through the school it was attached to and the headmistress of the school decided to spend it on something else.