Be kind. It’s a great suggestion for living in our modern world. Everyday people are bombarded with images of cruelty and suffering. While humans have a long history of not being particularly nice, the internet and social media seems to have hastened the awareness of incidences in the world.
But we are fighting back, with one act of kindness at a time. The memes are endless, millennials are entitled and offended by everything. Which may be true, but they just want to be entitled to live in a world without pollution, with enough food, and they get offended by meanness.
Conscious Purchasers
Although there is a lot of discussion around the consumerism and the abundance that most in western culture have, there is also an increasing demand from those consumers that goods which they purchase be made ethically. Collections like the ones found on https://omandah.com/collections/be-kind-collection are increasingly popular because they express what people are thinking, but they are also ethical in their manufacturing choices.
This means not only do consumers, particularly millennial consumers, expect goods they buy to be manufactured in humane standards where workers are paid and treated fairly, they will actually research where they are buying from to ensure that the goods are not just manufactured ethically, but follow the manufacture train to ensure that that everything from the processing of raw ingredients right through to distribution are as ethical and environmentally conscious as possible.
Easily Offended
This is a label that gets thrown out usually when someone has been called out on a joke that stinks. It is easy to wear a t-shirt that loudly declares everyone should F Off, but when you are called out for being rude and obnoxious, why get upset?
Everyone has bad days. Sometimes we are in a rush and don’t take the time to acknowledge the people who have helped us. sometimes we’re distracted and short with people. sometimes we’re frustrated and hurt and angry and take it out on those around us. This is different from going out of your way to be offensive in the name of being edgy or cool.
It really takes so little effort to be kind, or at least not to be an asshole. People, on mass, are slowly moving away from enjoying train wreak sensationalist journalism and shock jocks who make a living from winding people up to see if they can get a reaction.
Unfortunately, there is also the movement of people who do feel that their ‘right’ to free speech is being threatened, so they are choosing to amp up their negative messages. Like groups who picket the funerals of soldiers because they think they have made superior lifestyle choices and want to force others to follow the same life choices that they have made. Or people who troll others on Facebook for their own amusement (see here). They aren’t really worried about free speech; they are concerned that people aren’t doing that they tell them to. They’re worried that people aren’t responding positively to the speeches they are making.
In a world with so many hardships, people don’t want to be around those that will condemn them for smiling or wearing a rainbow. They want to surround themselves with kindness.
Pull people up don’t push people down
Be kind. This doesn’t mean that you should let people walk all over you, but this does mean if you’re in a position to help someone, you do. You do not need to give a starving person your last piece of bread if it will leave you hungry tomorrow, but if you’ve just had lunch, and are on the way home to a full pantry, would it be so hard to offer your apple to someone hungry?
You are not perfect, no one is, but you can be perfectly imperfect and try to let your light shine and brighten up your world, rather than be a source of darkness spreading hatred. Whether this in real life or on social media https://www.pnas.org/content/116/21/10226.
Be Mary Poppins not Pollyanna
Pollyanna saw everything as nice and wonderful, no matter what – and things just aren’t like that. However, Mary Poppins saw that life can be hard, and people are flawed, but you can only do your best to try and make things just a little nicer. She didn’t put up with much, but she did insist on kindness. In a world where you can be anything. Be kind.