麻豆社

From Father Brian D鈥橝rcy, a Catholic Passionist priest:

I was driving in heavy traffic last Monday afternoon. No matter how much I smiled or tried to look crest-fallen, no one looked my way to let me out of the side street.

Then it happened.

A young man in a sporty car flashed his lights and I slipped into the line of traffic. I waved gratefully in the mirror. He raised a thumb casually. He was cool about it all. My spirits were raised by a small act of kindness and perhaps his were too.

A few hundred yards down the road I let a tense looking mother with two children in the back seat, change into my lane. A relieved ten year-old waved out the back window. Kindness begets kindness. When you are kind to others it not only changes you, it changes the world.

How many lives were made easier that day by a few small acts of common courtesy? But then is there such a thing as a small act of kindness when every good deed creates an unknown ripple of virtue?

聽I鈥檓 convinced that a little kindness to another person is better than having a vast love for humanity. 聽It鈥檚 also more achievable. World hunger, wars, the survival of the planet and homelessness are beyond most of us, but making life a bit pleasanter for those around us is available to all of us.

Most important of all is the kind word. When I was growing up in Fermanagh, an old neighbour used to tell us 鈥淏e sure to taste your words well before you spit them out.鈥�

It鈥檚 all about being content to do your best in little things without being paralysed by the great issues; grow where you鈥檙e planted; live an ordinary life as creatively as you can.

In that way kindness becomes like the sun; it melts the ice of indifference.聽 It鈥檚 probably why they say kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Ralph Waldo Emerson got it right when he pointed out-: 鈥淵ou cannot do a kind act too soon/ for you never know/ how soon it will be too late.鈥�