NOM

RubinHighlander wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 12:37 pm Excellent! I've really been tuning the news out a lot lately, but I do love these types of stories and the world needs more of them.

This reminded me of last night, my DW was looking through her Jr. High yearbook and she talked about one particular teacher that took notice of how shy she was. So he offered to have her be his assistant as the coach of the track team. He also wrote in her yearbook to thank her for all her help and tell her what a sweet special person she was. It made her emotional to read it, obviously had a big impact on her.

I love that kind of organic and pure style of reaching out, especially to kids. Our experience in church with our kids never offered that; it always felt like pity or a project or forced, based on being kind because of consequences or blessings. I still think those kind acts happen a lot in local units, but it's seems so much better when it does not have religion hanging over it. Now with social media and all the likes or comments one might garner from a post of a thought, photo or video, it's even more noise. But there are gold nuggets to be found in those digital places as well; Out of the thousands of passers by I have several close friends I've connected with all over the globe and continue to interact with the past several years.

Now that our kids are adults, DW and I have found that we have more emotional energy to devote to reaching in our social circles and beyond to recognize people struggling and their potential value to the world and the beauty in their lives and their challenges and how we can help them is so many little ways. It seems to happen mostly organically, but sometimes we stop and talk about it and make conscious decisions to do more, be it financially or otherwise. It's just more proof that humans don't need dogma to tell them to act with empathy and kindness; it's woven into our DNA.

That seems to be the irony of the scripture that tells you not to do your alms before men; I would argue that doing it for a God, who is keeping track of all your actions in some book in Heaven, for recognition of a blessing or avoidance of a curse, is just as bad as doing it in front of your peers or the world.