Day One | Day Two | Day Three | Day Four | Day Five | Day Six | Day Seven | Day Eight | Day Nine | Day Ten | Day Eleven | Day Twelve | Day Thirteen | Day Fourteen | Day Fifteen | Day Sixteen | Day Seventeen | Day Eighteen | Day Nineteen | Day Twenty | Day Twenty One | Day Twenty Two
21-Day Kindness Project: Day 22 Wrap Up
Because only kindness makes sense as a radical response to sorrow:
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
Your must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for…”
– Naomi Shihab Nye
Congratulations for completing this 21 Days of Kindness. I am honored to have shared this kindness project with you and to have together developed and strengthened our commitment to spreading kindness and goodwill in our daily lives. I hope that you found the last few weeks useful and inspiring in some way.
Personally, I found that it was not always easy to fulfill each day’s challenge, but when I did, doing so helped me to drop deeper into my self, open my heart, and feel more aware of what connects us all to each other. But what was really a surprise is how much love I experienced coming into my life from others. There seems to be an alchemy in giving. For example, on the days when I did not feel particularly kind or motivated to show kindness, when I went out into the world with intentional acts of kindness anyway, then I felt kinder, and wanted to show more kindness. Then also when I showed kindness, I found that kindness ended up coming back to me in amazing unexpected ways from unexpected directions. The alchemy is that kindness begets kindness, and that has felt to me like a powerful awareness.
As for taking this forward, if you feel inclined you could gather a group of your friends and go through the 21 days again, or in your own way. You might take just one of the daily suggestions, one that you particularly resonated with, and focus on that for each of the next 21 days. As the saying goes, “use it or loose it” so the new mental habit pattern of looking for ways to embody goodwill, generosity and connection on a daily basis needs to be nurtured.
I believe, and hope you do as well, that we have changed our small corner of the world, and ourselves, over the past 21 days. May kindness be a guide for all of us going forward from here.
IF YOU FEEL LIKE GIVING ME FEEDBACK ABOUT THIS KINDNESS PROJECT, PLEASE DO! IT WILL HELP ME IN FUTURE PROJECTS AND TO LEARN WAYS TO SUPPORT MYSELF AND OTHERS IN THIS INTENTION. THANK YOU! CMICLEU@GMAIL.COM