Community Acts of Kindness
In this society, a lot of strain is placed on teachers and schools: they are expected to take care of all of a child’s needs in some cases since some parents cannot do this on their own.
A lot of strain is placed on police: they are expected to deal with a wide range of societal problems that no one else wants to deal with.
A lot of strain is placed on parents: they are expected to raise children well while dedicating themselves fully to their jobs. If these parents have older parents of their own, they may be faced with parenting children and caring for their parents all at once.
Much strain is placed on college students: they are expected to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives and pursue that major, yet there is no guarantee that there will be jobs when they graduate. The field that they study may not even exist in a few years.
There is a lot of strain placed on those with poor health or those with disabilities: how can they be expected to thrive when they must deal with lost time, energy, and the financial costs of their illness.
There is much strain placed on most people who live through some of the above or have family members who are living through other strains that I did not mention.
At some point, we must realize that no single profession can take on all of these strains. A teacher cannot fix it when a child is facing neglect in their home. The police cannot fix it when that child grows up to commit crimes. The solution of putting this person in jail is not a real solution. The real solution would have been to prevent this from happening in the first place. The parents of this criminal cannot fix it when they had decided long ago to work two jobs each to keep the lights on at home. They never made time for their own child.
The college student cannot fix it when he has taken 100k dollars in loans to get a degree in something that employers view as irrelevant. His guidance counselor never mentioned the risk of that when he was studying hard to earn good grades.
Those in poor health cannot fix it when they have to choose between spending money on taking care of their health or getting educated in a field that will help them have a good career.
Many people are strained enough that they can’t see beyond their immediate situation.
Expecting some of these professions to fulfill their roles perfectly can have disastrous effects. In reality, no one will fulfill their roles perfectly, so as individuals, we need to take on more – if we are in the position to do so.
If we can help someone, we should do it. If I can help some people in my community, this helps build a better community for all of us.
Many people surely will think that they are not in the position to help anyone. But it’s not as complicated as we may think. We all have a set of skills. If someone needs your help and cannot pay, consider helping out pro bono (without charging them). If you need certain materials to do the work, then tell them to pay for the materials and that you will do the rest.
For example, perhaps you make your living working at a company, earning a decent salary. But you also have many handy skills. If a coworker needs some help around the house, you may volunteer to help out one day, and you may not ask for any compensation if you know that he is struggling. Or perhaps this coworker is new and just moved in. He has plenty of other costs and things to worry about, and so it would be a great help to him if he did not have to pay you.
If you own a business and a client is paying for a wide variety of services, and at the last moment the client notices that he actually needs more services from you, you may perform a small additional service at no added cost as a “thanks” to this client. Or you may look for creative ways to help him that don’t require much extra work on your part without increasing his costs.
The better you are doing in your own life, the more you should look for opportunities to add value to the people around you, even if it does not necessarily increase your own profits.
We live in very profit-driven societies. We are obsessed with currency because it is a hard metric that we can track. We can look at our bank statements and see that the figures are going up or down or staying steady. With so many other important areas in our lives, they are not always so easily trackable.
For example, we do not have a device that measures love, peace, happiness, or wisdom. These are immeasurable, so we tend to disregard them in our societies that place great value on data. We treat them as unimportant when they are actually critical features of a properly functioning society.
Our thinking needs to shift more to being like a gardener. If I plant a peach tree and watch it grow, I am not concerned if it bears no fruit the first season I plant it. Maybe it is still young and needs time to grow. Maybe in the second year, it will give me a few peaches, but maybe in the third year, it will provide loads more peaches than I need.
The fruits come when they come – all I can do is nurture them to grow and wait patiently.
Practice your patience, and stop needing everything to happen right now.
Likewise, with our communities, the fruits will come when they come. If I meet a neighbor and find out her child struggles in algebra, I may think back to my own childhood. I found algebra to be highly frustrating, and I thought I would never understand it. But eventually, through hard work and through the kindness of my teacher, who tutored me pro bono, I was able to understand it quite well. And so, I may volunteer to help a neighbor’s child whenever he has a problem he is stuck on. (These days, there are so many online resources to help with these kinds of issues, but they did not exist when I was a child.)
These are small steps, but that is fine. We are all busy with our own lives, but there is so much more that matters beyond our own personal concerns.
Surely you have your own struggles, but ask yourself if you have all that you truly need. Do you have much more than you need? If you do, start thinking of others around you, of your community.
This neighbor’s child struggling through algebra may end up becoming a mathematician. Without my help, he may never have realized that he actually enjoyed the topic very much.
We never know what kinds of fruits will come from our actions or how much time they may take to truly blossom, but that is the wonderful thing about these community acts of kindness.
Even if the fruits of your labors are not always your own to profit from, there is a tremendous pleasure that comes from knowing that you have helped someone to become a better version of themselves. To help someone overcome an obstacle that is holding them back can also be life-changing.
When your community is able to thrive, there will be cascading effects. If one community is thriving, that community will help neighboring communities, and this positive, helpful energy will gradually spread through and through. From one community to the next, one city to the next, then one state to the next, then one country to the next.
It is not so easy, and I don’t mean to make it sound that way. But it all begins with a simple step from one individual. That one individual could be you today.
When someone asks you for help today, don’t cast them aside so easily. Take a few minutes and see what you can do to help. If you can, avoid setting up a “Wall of Busyness” where you are so busy with your own life that you cannot do anything for anyone else.
We tend to value our independence and figuring out our troubles on our own – but no one truly does everything on their own. The self-made man or woman is an illusion. No one is born, and taught, and guided toward greatness all on their own. We can achieve quite a lot through our own willpower, but we still need others to get there.
So it would be a step in the right direction if we continued to value our independence, but it is also important that we place more value on helpfulness. People need help to become fully independent. And people need help to thrive and arrive at a position where they can also help others.
Don’t judge someone just because they are at a lower level in the game of life. See what you can do to push them forward. You may be surprised to find where they end up.
So many people are on social media now. You may consider looking for groups or communities in your social media channels that correspond to your physical location. Perhaps someone near you could use a helping hand.
Or you may look for ways to help people who need advice in an area that you have expertise in. There are online communities for every conceivable skill, problem, and interest.
