Celebrating kindness

"Practise random kindness and senseless acts of beauty."

THIS is an underground slogan spreading rapidly across the world. It is the clarion call of an incipient movement called Guerrilla Goodness. It appears on walls, as bumper stickers, as a sign-off line in e-mail messages - and has an auto-multiplier effect.

It is positive anarchy, disorder, a sweet disturbance, writes Anne Herbert, a passionate proponent of the concept, in California, U.S..

The origins of the slogan are not known, but it is believed to have started in San Francisco. Philip Dawes, an activist in England, is among those spreading this slogan through bumper- stickers, cards and other merchandise. Each sticker is accompanied by a note which first appeared as an article on the Internet, "writer unknown", and has since been printed in many newspapers and magazines.

Excerpts from that article: It is a crisp winter day in San Francisco. A woman in a red Honda, Christmas presents piled in the back, drives up to the Bay Bridge tollbooth. "I'm paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me," she says with a smile, handing over seven commuter tickets.

One after another, the next six drivers arrive at the tollbooth, dollars in hand, only to be told, "Some lady up ahead already paid your fare. Have a nice day." The woman in the Honda, it turned out, had read something on an index card taped to a friend's refrigerator: "Practise random kindness and senseless acts of beauty." The phrase seemed to leap out at her, and she copied it down.

Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase spray-painted on a warehouse wall 100 miles from her home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. "I thought it was incredibly beautiful," she said, explaining why she has taken to writing it at the bottom of all her letters, "like a message from above." Her husband Frank liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the wall for his seventh graders, one of whom was the daughter of a local columnist. The columnist put it in the paper, admitting that though she liked it, she didn't know where it came from or what it really meant.

Two days later, she heard from Anne Herbert who lives in Marin, one of the country's 10 richest counties, where she house-sits, takes odd jobs and gets by. It was in a Sausalito restaurant that Herbert jotted the phrase down on a paper place mat, after turning it around in her mind for days. "That's wonderful!" a man sitting nearby said and copied it down carefully on his own place mat.

"Here's the idea," Herbert says. "Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly." "Kindness can build on itself as much violence can," she says. These actions are a counter- response to the despair that comes from reading and hearing about the random cruelties and senseless acts of violence that afflict daily life all over the world.

By contrast, the Random Kindness slogan is inspiring many people to find creative ways of spreading senseless acts of beauty. A man plants daffodils along the roadway, his shirt billowing in the breeze from passing cars. In Seattle, a man appoints himself a one-man vigilante sanitation service and roams the concrete hills collecting litter in a supermarket cart. In Atlanta, a man scrubs graffiti from a green park bench.

They say you can't smile without cheering yourself up a little - likewise, you can't do something kind without feeling that your troubles have been lightened if only because the world has become a slightly better place, says the little note that comes with the bumper sticker.

Like all revolutions, guerrilla goodness begins slowly, with a single act. Though it mostly spreads by its own power and momentum, there are also organised efforts to nudge it along. For example, the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation is an American non-profit body founded in 1995 as a forum committed to spreading kindness throughout the world. Apart from creating and distributing information and educational materials, the Foundation also organises an annual celebration called the Random Acts of Kindness Week. Last year, the sixth annual Random Acts of Kindness Week, encompassed over 5000 communities in over 35 countries. The Foundation also recruits, trains and assists volunteer Kindness Coordinators.

Similarly there is the Generosity Game, created by John Stoner, which is spread through a card which accompanies anonymous good deeds. "This is for you," says the card. "Now it is your turn: do something good for someone else. Do it anonymously. Pass on this card." The game is actually the opposite of money, says John Stoner. In using money, there is a direct exchange of money for a product or service. Generosity keeps services, goods and goodness in circulation by creating an ever widening circle of exchange rather than the transactional link between a buyer and seller.

Then there is the World Kindness Movement which held its first international meeting in Tokyo in 1997. The meeting was hosted by the Small Kindness Movement of Japan and attended by representatives from Australia, Canada, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. The participants pledge to work through the individual networks of each member country to build a more compassionate world.

Many of the ideas that such groups foster may seem absurdly obvious, yet it seems that there is ample scope for reiterating, highlighting and even celebrating the obvious.

Many Indians may be tempted to scoff at such Western trends as the need of an alienated and fractured society. But have you noticed how many people look amazed and surprised when someone in a crowded bus or train gives up their seat for an old person or a young mother carrying a baby?

Random kindness, like love and non-violence, is as old as the hills. Its invisible energy moves through all our lives. So why not find ever new ways to celebrate it through senseless acts of beauty? A few websites for more information:

RAJNI BAKSHI

www.worldkindness.org.sg, www.actsofkindness.org, www.generosity.org, www.globalideasbank.org

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