Random Acts Of Kindness

I have always been intrigued by those signs I see from time to time encouraging me to practice random acts of kindness. There never seems to be any particular season when they appear the most, but if I were to try posting one with any hope of success I guess I would do it during Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Immediately, saying that felt wrong to me, and I am forced to go back and think about it. Is kindness a seasonal thing? Can we ignore the fact that brotherly love seems to be promoted heavily for only a couple of months out of the year. After that we are on our own. Slowly I begin to see the real message in the signs. It is a very sad message indeed.

For me, random means having no rhyme or reason and not likely to occur again in any kind of regular fashion. Not wanting to accept that when it comes to being kind, I consulted the dictionary to see if there was a kinder, gentler definition. After a brief consultation with Daniel Webster, I return to report my dismay. Not wanting to share the gloomy results of my research, let me just say that random acts of kindness is a very bad idea if you want to be thought of as a kind person.

So it seems, you either are or you’re not. The sign that encourages this kind of erratic behavior begins to look like the final act of desperation of someone who has given up on humanity. They are tired of encouraging people to make a real difference in the world they share with so many others. How sad is that? Can’t you picture them now, standing on the street corner, begging for just one single kind act from a stranger.

Now, whenever I see the “Random Acts of Kindness” signs I put them in the same category as “Save yourself. The end of the world is coming!” Having just discounted the message itself as a desperate attempt to call on humanity to change how they treat one another, now I can focus on the real problem at hand. How do we convince people to change their “evil” ways and truly practice acts of kindness towards one another, not randomly, but all the time.

The real problem with this message seems to be the word random. I have experienced situations where people were kind to me one time, and then insulted me or stabbed me in the back the next. It is this random behavior that destroys any desire we might have to trust one another. If this happens often enough, every time someone is kind to us we wonder what their real motives are. Now, that is really sad! Like I said earlier, when it comes to kindness, you either are or you’re not. If you want people to trust you, take random out of your efforts to love and be loved.