2012: The Year of Kindness

Yesterday a girlfriend of mine posted a story on Facebook about having been at the gas station and witnessed a man park his car, get out and walk over to another woman driving an older car and inform the woman that he wanted to pay for her gas. No ask for payback. No harassment of the woman. Nothing. Just a simple random act of kindness that made not only the woman receiving the gas happy, but it uplifted my girlfriend who witnessed this unabashed generosity between strangers.

Witnessing this selflessness prompted my girlfriend to decide that as she celebrates her 40th birthday this year, she's going to perform 40 random acts of kindness, one for each year of her life. She then encouraged all of her friends on Facebook to spend the year practicing their own random acts of kindness and asked, "What would the world be like with all this kindness"?

Over a dozen friends immediately stepped forward saying they were in for 40 random acts of kindness to celebrate their 40th birthdays.

Today, I saw a story on ABC7Chicago's site about Chicagoan Ryan Garcia. He's set out to perform a different random act of kindness each day this year. That's 366 random acts of kindness. His motivation? Garcia has a 4-month old daughter and he wants to set a good example for her. Some of his random acts are silly like giving hugs today while others are serious, such as sending letters to soldiers in Afghanistan. He's got a blog where he's documenting his efforts, is on Twitter, and has a Facebook page where he's taking suggestions.

Watch his story here:

I'm loving this idea of making 2012 the Year of Kindness. What would our world be like 349 days from now if we each performed even one random act of kindness per week? I imagine we'd see a seismic shift in our attitude towards each other, that prescriptions for antidepressants would drop off (you can't be doing that much selfless good without beginning to feel good yourself), our relationships would be better, and people would be nicer.

As Five for Fighting has asked, What Kind of World Do You Want? Let's go make the world better this year.

Lyrics to What Kind of World Do You Want by Five for Fighting

Got A Package full of wishes.
A Time machine, a magic wand, a globe made out of gold.
No instructions or commandments,
Laws of gravity or indecisions to uphold

Printed on the box I see,
A.C.M.E.'s built a world to be,
Take a chance, grab a piece,
Help me to believe it.

What kind of world do you want?
Think anything.
Let's start at the start, build a masterpiece,
Be careful what you wish for...
History starts now.

Should there be people or peoples?
Money, funny, pedestals, for fools who never pay.
Raise your army, choose you steeple.
Don't be shy, the satellites, can look the other way.

Lose the earthquakes, keep the faults.
Fill the oceans, without the salt.
Let every man own his own hand.
Can you dig it baby?

What kind of world do you want?
Think anything.
Let's start at the start, build a masterpiece,
Be careful what you wish for...
History starts now.

Sunlight's on the bridge.
Sunlight's on the way.
Tomorrow's callin,
There's more to this than love.

What kind of world do you want?
What kind of world do you want?

What kind of world do you want?
Think anything.
Let's start at the start, build a masterpiece, Yeah
History starts now, starts now.

Be careful what you wish for...

Start now, now.