Of the types of acts that leave indelible warm and fuzzy memories on my rather bedraggled heart, it’s the kind ones I remember most clearly; Not so much the gestures of love. They can often come combined, I suppose, but it’s still the kindness that stands out.
I think that’s because kindness is so simple and generous and, usually, very quietly given.
Love is loud and – sometimes – ugly. It is selfish too in its own undefinable way.
So when I look back on the memories I’ve harvested I am quite sure it’s the kind acts that stand out.
The lady whose name I’ll never know, standing behind the make-up counter in a department store who held my hand and spoke calmly and warmly to me while we waited for the police so I could report a sexual assault. Who whispered into my traumatised brain ‘this was not your fault; it was not about you’.
My child, who at the age of three, watched me trying to put my socks on through the intense, tear-jerking pain of a debilitating back injury and said: Don’t do that, Mum. That’s my job. And proceeded to put my socks on my feet for me punctuated with gentle kisses dropped onto the pads of my toes.
A former co-worker-now-friend who continues to tell me that my presence helps to make the world go around as I pull myself through the black holes of family court.
And so many, many more.
Kindness is the antidote to that dark spot that is sometimes inside me. It stops me from hitting the bottom over and over again.
And so I conclude: While love is amazing; kindness is extraordinary.
1000 days 