Letters to Soldiers

In law school I learned that the Bill of Rights is not a "bill of responsibilities". We get many basic rights in this country and have almost no responsibilities. Even simple things like voting and paying taxes are avoided by a large number of people.

So who takes responsibility for us? One group that comes to mind is the US Military because they put their lives on the line in countries all over the world so that we are safe.

My act of kindness this week was to think of a way to help these troops who have taken an oath to protect our country.

We have over 60,000 troops in Afghanistan whose sole purpose is to fight terrorism where it lives and breathes. I'm not going to argue about whether I support the mission, I am going to support the troops. To put it into perspective, the number of troops in Afghanistan is equal to 1.5 times the population of any of the following towns or cities in New Jersey: Paramus, Hoboken, Pennsauken, or Atlantic City (yes people live there, it's not just a place to gamble and buy salt water taffy).

I went to Anysoldier.com and randomly selected a person to write a letter to. I then read some of the sample letters and tried to keep it short and sweet.

The letter I wrote is posted up at the top of the page. I am mailing the letter today and made sure to include my email address, maybe they will want to correspond.

This is our country, this is our world, we can make it pretty nice, it's our responsibility. And without stepping up and taking that responsibility seriously, we don't have the Bill of Rights.

Hockey Tickets

A good buddy of mine recently graduated from law school. I had tried to warn him off going but he insisted on inflicting the pain and suffering on himself anyways! As a sort of gift, I invited him and his wife to the Devils v. Rangers game last night along with my little boy (his first hockey experience).

I got the tickets through a business contact and these seats were "fat". They were in the 17th row in the Prudential Center and it came with access to a food court, all of which was included in the price of the ticket. A nice way to spend the evening.

Alas, my buddy's babysitter cancelled at the last minute. Not only did he recently finish law school but he has a young child and one on the way. A busy man to say the least. He was very depressed that he couldn't go but these things happen.

All of this happened at about 4:45 pm, 2 hours before the game was to start. What was I going to do with the extra tickets? Undeterred, I called my "go to guy" for last minute sporting events, my brother Ken. He's a huge Ranger's fan, and he asked his oldest son to come along. We were in business.

The hockey game was great with the Devils v. Rangers rivalry and the seats were spectacular. My son's favorite part, cotton candy and the Zamboni! Gotta love a five year old.

So although my act of kindness started going in one direction and ended up somewheres else, it was still a great evening. Well, except that my buddy watched on TV.

Have I Changed the World Yet?

The One Month Anniversary!

I started this blog one month ago this Wednesday with the idea of tracking kind acts, random or otherwise, that I perform. Not for accolades, but with the hope to explore kindness as a way of life.

I wanted to open my heart to the possibility that we can all make a difference by being kinder to each other. I want to be more involved.

So far I've become involved with food drives, donations to animal shelters and I even gave blood for the first time. I think it's a good start.

One thing I noticed is that I constantly battle against time. I feel that I spend so much time "earning a living" that I don't always have the quiet time to do the things I love to do or explore the other things life has to offer. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that the world seems to move too fast sometimes.

With that in mind I am going to give a little kindness to myself and to those I come in contact with today by going a little slower, listening better and smiling more.

Have a great day!

New Jersey Blood Drive

I am keeping my commitment to kindness by trying things that I haven't done in the past. This means pushing myself out of my toasty comfort zone and taking responsibility for others as well as myself. The New York Blood Center blood drive fit the bill. It's help to others, it took about 15 minutes and it's an experience I've never had before.

Two years ago I got very sick. I was unexpectedly hospitalized with a serious condition called diverticulitis, an infection in the pocket of my large intestine, (sexy, right?). The infection was so bad that I was out of work for over a month on intravenous medication and went through surgery where they removed 16 inches of my large intestine. I didn't know that I had that much to give. Of course I asked the doctor who said, "Don't worry, you don't need that much."

It made me appreciate my health. It also made me realize that blood is something that all of us take for granted.

Now the statistics - About 60% of us qualify to give blood. About 2% actually give blood to the blood bank.

Why don't more people give blood? I think many are afraid or get nauseous at the sight of blood. What if someone you knew was dying and needed your blood? I think we would all roll up your sleeve and give all that we could. Why is it any different because we haven't met the recipient?

Kindness towards others transcends the typical relationships we establish as father, son or brother and works on the concept that we all belong to the group of mankind. As part of that community we respect each other and want to give back.

One in three people will need blood in their lifetime. This area is desperately short of supply and we rely on other areas of the country to supply us. It's truly a "gift from the heart!"

Commitment to Kindness goes to the Dogs (and Cats)

Yesterday's little adventure in random and not so random acts of kindness involved Nico and I donating bleach, kitty litter, dog biscuits and cat food to the local animal shelter.

I have been a dog lover all of my life and although I've never owned a cat, I feel for the plight of abandoned animals and thought this would be a good way to help out our community.

Montville Animal Shelter takes care of hundreds of stray dogs and cats each year. They bring the strays into their care and hold them in an "observation area" to make sure the cat or dog isn't sick. Once the cat or dog seems fine, they include the animal in the shelter with the rest of the strays. Some dogs are even taken to foster homes until they get adopted.

Prior to going to the shelter I looked online and saw that they needed bleach for sanitizing, kitty litter and any type of food. We spent about $25 and about 15 minutes picking out the bleach, litter and food for the animals. Once again, a little time, a little love and a little kindness goes a long way.

We entered through the isolation area and were greeted by a frantically barking chihuahua. I asked the woman what happened with this young dog. She said that people probably got it for Christmas and didn't want it so they brought her in for adoption. Now I'm not a big fan of small, "yappy" dogs but your heart goes out to an animal that was met with love and praise on Christmas Day and is now living in a cage alone.

There were other dogs and cats that had their own stories. Who was found as a stray, what dog or cat was left at the shelter after closing, not a very flattering refection for us humans.

If you get the chance, visit your local shelter. It's a great way to get involved with the community and get a little animal time even if you can't adopt one . . . yet!

A GPS Gives Me A Little Direction

Back in January I made the commitment to be kinder. I would try harder to be involved and I would find a way to do it as part of my life expression. As with many deals we make with ourselves, the Universe offered me opportunities almost immediately.

Not long after my "Commitment to Kindness" I was heading to Connecticut to a business appointment one morning. I stopped at a red light in Pequannock, NJ. I was talking to a friend on the phone when a small, frantic woman tapped on my window.

I rolled the window down and she hurriedly told me that she was late for a "cat scan" appointment and couldn't find the office, could I help her?

I really felt for her. I told her that I had a GPS and if she had the address, I could drive there following the directions and she could follow me in her car. I called the office to confirm the address and I plugged it into my GPS.

The small frantic woman got back into her car. She followed me to the medical office and waived to me as she exited her car, running to her appointment. The entire episode took about 10 or 15 minutes.

I wonder if I was given the chance to help that woman because I was open to the opportunity? I wonder whether I have ignored other chances to connect with people that need help because I was too busy or disconnected.

When we are open to random acts of kindness, the opportunities will present themselves and it only takes 10 or 15 minutes to touch a life.

Have a great day.

Be Kind to Nature

The picture above was taken last year when was backpacking with Dave and George, two of my very best friends. The picture above is real, it wasn't doctored and I'm no genius with a camera. I wanted to capture what I felt and saw at that moment above Feather Falls. It was as close to a Zen moment as I could come.

I think that nature is our greatest gift and our greatest responsibility. We need to be kind to her. We need to perform simple acts of kindness for her like recycling, composting, and conservation.

Today, maybe I'll be a little more thankful for my surroundings. I'll pick up the wrapper that didn't make it into the garbage can. I'll daydream about planting a vegetable garden this spring. I'll see what I can do to make the world a little more beautiful.

Skiing and Kindness

A Commitment to Kindness is my chance to focus on opening my heart to the possibility that if I change my mindset, how I feel about simple acts, I am changing the world.

While skiing this weekend I performed two random acts of kindness and received the best smiles from the recipients. It made the weekend special (well the company and the skiing didn't hurt either!)

Now for those of you who know me well, you may have noticed I have a tendency to "get very deep" into thought and I can even be a little intense at times! I know, I know. But I've always felt that this allowed me to really feel things, to really see things, to project that energy out.

So I didn't have anything planned for my commitment to kindness, in fact I was planning on a little weekend getaway of skiing. But kindness shouldn't take a holiday so I opened my heart to the possibilities and let it happen.

My two acts of kindness were very simple. First on Saturday, in a crowded ski lodge, a woman was walking up a flight of stairs. No big deal, right? Well she was wearing ski boots and carrying a tray loaded with food and drink. As any skier know it's definitely an acquired taste. Walking in the ski boots I mean, although the food in the lodge may be as well.

As I came by her, I heard her exclaim "Oh!" and saw one of the sodas she was carrying, topple off of the tray. So here is this woman, packed into a ski suit, balancing on a large flight of stairs in ski boots, hands full of a "shakey" tray, watching her Pepsi roll around the stairs slowly leaking out. I shuffled over in my ski boots, picked up the soda (saving at least 3/4 of the contents) and put it back on her tray.

Now before you think I'm going around waiting for something to happen so I can act and before you think that I deserve a pat on the back, it's not that at all. I think I did what most people would have done and I helped that lady. I just happened to be there. She thanked me profusely, smiled grandly and we laughed about trying to balance the tray and walk in the boots like Frankenstein.

The second act was on the ski slopes. A little boy maybe six or seven was skiing with his father. The boy had dropped his pole and was struggling to come back up the hill to get it. Now I saw the father below the child waiting and I saw the boy struggle to climb back up the hill. I skied over, picked up the pole, skied down to the boy and handed it over. The smile on that little boy's face made my day. It again was nothing more than something someone else may have done but I saw my own son one day, maybe needing a little help from a stranger and I stepped in.

I think of these moments as times for me to reach beyond myself and realize I could be in that situation one day. The habits we form in the simple tasks in life will be the skills we rely upon during the troubled times.

I also feel connected when I do these things for others. These are small everyday things that may not have an impact or the people may forget right after I leave, but I feel good about it.

Help With a Food Drive

The Universe really works in mysterious ways and gives us the opportunities we ask for. It turns out that one of the followers of this blog and fellow peewee soccer coach (Go Black Shirt Team) Juliana, is organizing a food drive for the Morris County Interfaith Food Pantry.

This is the very same food pantry that my son and I visited earlier this week. It turns out that Juliana works with seniors in our area, many of whom receive food from the Pantry. Her contacts at the Food Pantry told her the same thing I had learned (please see "Food For Thought" posted below). They are suffering from a severe shortage of food causing a real crisis with the families that rely on them for sustenance. She agreed to hold a food drive because of the dire situation.

My goal is to collect and provide 100 individual food items to Juliana's food drive. As part of my commitment to kindness, I will pledge to pick up food donations from anyone reading this blog, that wants to donate. The food drive collection will take place on February 27th and 28th so If you are interested, you can give me a call, send me an email or post a note here and I will respond.

Thanks for your help and like I've said before, "a little goes a long way when it comes to kindness". Okay, I haven't said that before but it sounds good, doesn't it?

Commit to the Small Things

"We cannot do great things, only small things with great love." Mother Theresa

Who's going to argue with Mother T?

I've made the commitment to be kind. I've told some of my ideas, expressed some views and gave some examples. Now I want to hear from you.

Tell me about your experiences. What have you done, large or small, random or not so random, kind and spectacular that make you feel that you are part of a community?

Plus give me ideas of things I can do. That's what it's all about after all. We are here, now, and what we do on a daily basis is really our life. It's not the "once I get" that makes your life what it is.

You know, "Once I get the (fill in the blank), I will have that settled and then I can start helping people." The usual choices are car, vacation, house, boyfriend or girlfriend, you get the idea.

I look at acts of kindness as the same thing. Without some commitment to do it now, without opening my heart to the possibility that I can change the world through simple acts of kindness, I will really never know.

The key is to take some small act random or otherwise and get the ball rolling. Then please tell me about your story. Let's get inspired together.

Food For Thought

I want this blog to identify ways that small everyday acts can impact the world. On some days it's about being polite, helping a family member or a random act of kindness. I also want to to explore volunteerism and other kind things I can do to impact the people I come in contact with.

The act should be simple, fun and an extension of who I am. When things are no longer fun, you may lose the ability to repeat them. I'm not saying it can't be challenging, that may be part of the fun, but it shouldn't be painful. Plus I lead a busy life, I have a job, I raise a small boy and I commute about two hours a day. I want to give back but I want to be realistic. So if I can do these things without having to drastically alter my lifestyle, I will probably replicate them often and build up momentum.

I'm a real "foodie" and I can spend many hours each day talking about food and cooking. A logical extension of this is finding the local food bank. The Morris County Interfaith Food Pantry is close to where I live and after researching it on the web, I found that they were in dire need of foodstuffs, more so than any other time of year. Since they included a list of the most needed items I decide that I would buy some groceries for the food pantry when I went food shopping for myself.

I arbitrarily picked $20.00 as my limit (I know, big spender) but solely to illustrate a point. I just don't think most people will miss $20.00 in their lives.

Here's what I purchased:

• Five boxes of San Georgio Pasta on sale ($5.00)
• Five cans of Chef Boyardee pasta on sale ($5.00)
• Five cans of Progresso Soup on sale ($5.00)
• Five cans of evaporated milk ($3.45) this made me sad because the top three got me through college but milk makes me think of small children doing without milk and starving
• Three boxes of Post cereal with a coupon ($3.99) - I let my son pick these out after explaining what we were doing and he picked, Fruity Pebbles, Alphabits and Cocoa Pebbles.
• One 16 oz. container of instant oatmeal. ($2.56)

Not so bad for $25.00 (I went over the budget but you get the idea).

I was shocked and a little sad to realize that I can blow through $25.00 on a good lunch or at Happy Hour on a Friday and I might be feeding a family for a week on this. I really won't miss the money (think of finding money in your jeans after taking them from the dryer, you really didn't miss it).

All in all I probably spent less than 30 minutes from concept to execution. That included finding the charity online, reading their food list, looking in the local flyer about sales, going shopping, calling the food bank and dropping the food off at the pantry.

So, it doesn't get much simpler than this. A small act of kindness to help others, it wasn't costly, it wasn't time consuming and some kid is going to get Fruity Pebbles for breakfast tomorrow.

So Easy Even A Child Could Do It . . . . .

Yesterday I was crabby. Now for some people this might be a natural state but I like being happy better. The question is, how do I get psyched for acts of kindness, random and otherwise if I'm crabby and don't feel like it?

Any commitment I make becomes a learning experience. Yoga, meditation, going to church, relationships, all present me with an opportunity to learn how to do something when I don't want to do it. But I make the commitment to it and I try to figure out how to cope. It's where I learn about myself and what I'm capable of accomplishing.

Well, yesterday was my first day of learning "How to be kind to my fellow man when I just didn't feel like it." Now I had a little help with this lesson and when I say little, I mean my little boy.

While enjoying the snow in a local park yesterday, my son and I met some cross country skiers. I was a little crabby and not really into being social when my son strikes up a conversation with an older woman skiing alone. I encourage him to speak to adults in my presence because I want him to be independent and explore his world. So I stood by and let him lead the conversation. He asked her name, introduced himself and asked why she was skiing alone. They spoke for about ten minutes and we found out that Mrs. M.'s kids are all grown up and her granddaughter is too young to come skiing yet.

It ended with her wishing a us good day and my son saying, " Will you be back tomorrow? We can talk more then."

Mrs. M. said, "No I'm going to visit my brother tomorrow."

He said, "Oh, why don't you bring him here with you?"

She laughed and agreed that maybe he would come another time and wished us well and skied off.

I was so impressed with how my son connected with this stranger and how kindness just came naturally to him. I think it was both being open to the moment without any embarrassment. A real lesson in being kind.

I tend to learn more about myself when things go wrong than when things go right. I think facing a discouraging day is part of being human. I have to be reminded to start the next day, hour, or minute as a new beginning. It's the lesson of approaching the world with the innocence of a child (see above!), accepting my shortcomings and beginning again. I think it's what keeps my commitments alive.

So after my lesson in beginning again, we went to lunch and I left a large tip for the waiter at IHOP, even after he messed up the order. I felt he needed a break, maybe we both did.


Joe

I would like to buy some kindness, please.

So I'm at work yesterday, consciously thinking about being kind. Waiting for the opportunity to be nicer to people, to open a door, to give a smile and maybe a hearty "Hello!". I feel like a sitcom character who tells his family, "I'm really going to change this time" and there's a montage of all the nice deeds he does before he explodes in anger (cue laugh track) . . . .

Now I'm doing all of this consciousness while I'm cleaning out my office email. I come across a request from our CEO about Haiti. You remember Haiti, major earthquake, thousands dead, no resources and a slightly paranoid government. Sad but they had their 15 minutes of compassion, it was a good story while it lasted but the news doesn't give them top billing any more.

My employer asked for personal donations, which they would match, for relief funds that were helping Haiti (the corporation was giving a large check in addition). I didn't give right away because I recalled that back around 9/11, someone had found out that their "act of kindness" donation was not being used directly for the victims but to fund the larger organization. It was an "ah hah" moment for many people that chided themselves into believing that when you send money to a charity, it goes directly to the people that need it. Ask any girl scout troop mother how much of the price of the cookies goes to the troop and reality will slap you in the face like a wet towel.

I think it's a real calling in people to work for charitable organizations. The work is an invaluable source of kindness towards others. The question is, does it count as a true act of kindness for me if I am another step removed?

I'm not "on the ground" helping people, I'm not working at the organization that runs the show, I just stuff money into an envelope and send it off with the hope that others can do the work I don't think I have time to do.

What if you are closer to the end source of the money you donate? I give money to the local first aid squad every year but that's partially selfish. I want my locals to have the best training and equipment so that if I'm in an emergency, they can use it on me. I mean, if you are having a heart attack do you want to find out that the local first aid squad couldn't afford a "defib" machine because of a lack of donations (. . . stay away from the light! . . . )?

I think giving money to charities is an act of kindness. It may not give you the feeling of connecting with others that helping a neighbor has or in a random act of kindness for that old lady at the supermarket but it's a kindness nonetheless. It's part of the mosaic of giving that makes us feel like we are part of something bigger.

So for my acts of kindness, I did wish a Happy Birthday to the girl in my office (it was her birthday after all). I did talk to that crazy woman to see if she was alright during the snow storm yesterday and I did send the money to Haiti, including making sure my company matched my gift.

Is your name Jackass?

How I Make a Commitment to Kindness.

A few weeks ago, while driving with my 5 year old son, I was cut off by another driver. In a short tempered moment I yelled out "Hey Jackass!"

From the back seat my son said, "Daddy, how did you know his name was Jackass?"

Thinking quickly I said, "Oh, he had it on his license plate."

After chuckling, I realized that I wasn't being that patient and my son had witnessed it. Now living in New Jersey, this scene repeats itself again and again on the highways. I don't know if we created road rage but I think we made it into performance art.

We've all been there, impatient, pissed off or maybe just not as nice as we could be. It got me to thinking, "Why aren't kind to each other?

Now you may be saying, "Joe, you're too hard on yourself, everyone loses their temper now and again".

I guess I know I'm not a bad person and although the story above is true it's just one little piece of a picture of the world that made me want to do things a little differently.

I'm at a stage in my life when I want things to have meaning. I want to raise a good kid that understands that caring about others isn't a weakness, it's a strength we can cultivate. I want to know that a regular guy named Joe can have a positive impact to the world.

I decided that I would spend this year cultivating kindness. Maybe if I actively cultivate it, I might inspire others to be kind as well.

If you believe, like me, that kindness can change the world, that all kind acts, random and otherwise, large and small, make the world a better place, let me know.

Joe