Making the World Better; One Random Act of Kindness At a Time
Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Life, happiness, thought innovatoin Monday Aug 4, 2008
How to make the world a better place? You could form a charity, or dedicate your life to finding a cure for cancer. Perhaps, organise or attend rallies to world peace. Maybe you could lobby your political representative to get us out of Iraq. All of these are great steps you can take to make the world a better place. But there’s also a bunch of simpler stuff we can all do. Easy, spontaneous small actions that we can take to improve the day of the people around us. A wonderful little book by Danny Wallace called Random Acts of Kindness lists many many such things and I’d like to share them with you here. So read on and perhaps you will be inspired to make a small difference today by doing something small for those around you.
- Give old socks or gloves to a homeless person
- Take a morning coffee to a receptionist
- Offer to swap seats on a bus or a train so two friends can sit with each other
- Write a cheery hello on a banknote and then spend it
- Give a disposable camera to a group of people you see having fun
- Lay some flowers at an otherwise bare grave
- Pop a sugar cube next to an ants nest
- Take old toys to a maternity ward and tell them to give them out to whoever needs them
- If you see a homeless person with a dog, pop into a nearby butcher and buy the dog a bone
- Leave your pound in the shopping trolley
- Buy a bar of chocolate then give it to the person who sold it to you
- Buy a bunch of flowers but then tell the flower seller to give them away to the next person that comes along
- Give a lollipop to a lollipop lady
- If you see an incredibly cheap flight, buy it and offer it to your friends
- Buy a copy of the Big Issue then give it back to the seller
- Hand out a packet of wine gums to anyone you see doing a boring job, such as a car park attendant.
I could not find a contact form so I use a comment instead.
Would you mind turning on email in FeedBruner so that option also is available. That would be an act of random kindness
Great post Steve! Couldn’t agree more with everything you suggested. It’s the tiniest little things that make the world a better place.
@Bengt: Good point well made! Consider it done