Yes – I realise it probably sounds a bit Mary Poppins-ish doesn’t it?  But I’m thinking there’s a real need for kindness in our world today.

Somehow, wherever you are in the world, it feels to me as if we are being taken over by violence, aggression, spite, nastiness and all sorts of stuff.

I recognise that there’s a lot of pent up aggression and frustration after 18months+ with a pandemic and restrictions.  But do we really need to be so aggressive with each other?

Hate seems to simply breed yet more hatred. But a spoonful of kindness will go a long way to soothing angst and frustration.

I live on a gated community site and some new neighbours of mine recently were, rather belatedly, provided with a remote control for the gates.  Copying the remote should be simple, but it didn’t work when they asked me to do it.

So I gave it back to them with apologies.

And of course there was disappointment for them, and for me.

Shortly afterwards, I started googling things as you do, and decided I would have another go for them.

So I got the remote back, but still it didn’t seem to work.

Perhaps I should mention that the frustration was heightened because although these are “new” neighbours, they have been here 4 months already and should have had a remote when they moved in.  But management systems have been rather slow in dealing with this...

So the frustration was great and the inconvenience for the last four months has been significant.

And then I just left the process for a while.

One more try, I thought, before I finally admit defeat.....and it worked!  Whatever I had done, in whatever order, had managed to finally sort the problem and copy the new remote from my existing one so that it worked.

They were suitably very grateful.  And I was relieved.

It took a bit of my time, but it was worth the trouble.  And that kindness resulted in a box of chocs coming my way.

Now I know that is a simple example, and it obviously won’t solve all the wars in the world, but I think the moral of the story is that a little bit of kindness can go a long way to restoring some gentleness and balance in society, between communities and generally making the world a nicer place.

What can you do today?