151-19-08-2010

“You know what I didn’t get?  I didn’t get my hug, that’s what I didn’t get.”  Then, Melvin Palmer reached out and hugged someone, getting what he wanted.

                                                -- Boston Legal: Episode: “Thanksgiving”: Season Five

… sometimes you just can’t do things like that for yourself.

                                                -- Owen Thornton

The Human Kindness Club

By W. Owen Thornton BA

Recently (150-11-08-2010: Can We Trace Human Kindness) I wrote about receiving a free gift at a time when money was tight.  I thought that perhaps I had received it, not only because I had been directly kind to others for some time before that, nor because I was in a mental space to receive such a gift but also because I had told someone about what I needed.  I hadn’t asked for it so much as simply laid out my story and that single person had the single, specific, previously-owned item locked away and sitting in his filing cabinet.  It got me to thinking that we might be able to create human kindness clubs: groups of people we know, like or love and trust, to whom we can say I’ve always wanted to … or times are tough and it would be great if I could get a …  It could be a new job, a specific item, finding a group of people who will read our novels, even though you don’t intend to send them out to be published, a contact with a literary agent (my dream … or maybe I should back up and wish that someone could tell me what I need to do with my fiction writing so that my work is good enough to acquire an agent) … etc.

My article today is to encourage you to initiate your own human kindness club.

Gather a group of people together whom you trust.  Trust will be vital as you’ll be opening your heart’s secret desires to them and you don’t want an insensitive person laughing at you or diminishing your dream. 
If you’ve ever heard of the smart concept for dreams or goals, that means they should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timed.  (Google SMART goals and you’ll receive lots of information to help you!)  So “travelling” or “having the ability to travel” isn’t a good goal.  But going to a white-sand beach in Tahiti where you can lay under a palm canopy where it is safe for Westerners before 2020, may well be a good one: good as long as it’s attainable (you can raise the money) etc.  Or, maybe the goal should be to help you get a part-time job so you can raise the money to go to Tahiti and sit on the beach for a week or two.
Only share things/dreams/desires/goals that you are willing to discuss your motive for why you want it.  Hearing your story about why you want: to do, to go, to have, to travel, etc. will help those who will be thinking of you in the days to come, so they can have active emotions about your goals.  This will better enable others to think of you, and to be inspired to help you.
Set your own group guidelines.  Is everyone willing to “play?”  There’s no point including a kind person if they’re never going to take the time to call you when they have an idea as to how to help you achieve your goals/dreams.  And there’s no point joining a club if the receiver of the assistance won’t follow up with a call to a new contact etc.  (Though there could be VERY good reasons why people do not follow up on what we might think are excellent leads or tips!)  People have to be willing to participate on both ends.  You as a group will know what your own guidelines should be.  Some guidelines to include may be:

Setting the frequency of getting together to check in:  It may be that you only have to get together once every six months, maybe only once a year!
Announcing results: do you report only to the person who helped you as to what you discovered, or do you report the human kindness act of helping to everyone so they can see that the human kindness club is actually working?
Limiting the number of dreams/goals per person to a very few.
Creating the flexibility to change goals. 

I’m hoping to cast this kind of group for myself in days to come.  When I received something I needed which I didn’t think I could afford, it happened circumstantially.  I just happened to be talking to the one person I knew who could really help me out.  I think that what I saw in the movie Pay It Forward, (I read the book too) was inspiring, but the people who paid good fortune forward … practiced proactive acts of selfless human kindness after receiving something good for themselves well, they serendipitously stumbled upon situations where they could help others.  I have asked all of us to have human kindness on our radar so that we can do the right thing at the right time to deliberately help someone who needs just the kind of help that person can give.  

What I want to do here, by initiating human kindness clubs is to remove the element of chance of helping others.  When we don’t know what people need, we can’t actively go out and do acts of human kindness to help them.  But were we to know what people most secretly want … well then we could actively target our thinking in specific ways to help them in the most personal set of previously unspoken goals and dreams.  We do a little bit of this in life.  For example:  Bob sees Jan struggling with a perfectly functioning 25 year-old television.  It doesn’t connect to DVD players, it doesn’t have a lot of new features … and Jan can’t afford a new one.  So Bob observes this.  A couple of years later, nothing has changed for the Jan, but now Bob’s father has passed and Bob’s father was a TV-Junkie, buying up new TVs with new features faster than the televisions burned out.  Bob inherits four big televisions and voila, gives one to Jan.  This kind of thing does and can happen, but often, really important things that someone desires or needs and where they can’t help themselves to achieve that goal or dream is unspoken.  So Bob can do nothing to help, because Bob is ignorant of Jan’s real needs.  This is the reason why a Human Kindness Club just might work.

Hey!  I don’t know if it will or not.  But what have you got to lose?

I’m just saying, anything that gives you an edge to help you live the life you’ve always dreamed of … well … isn’t it worth a few pleasant dinners a year with friends so you can share those things with them … and perhaps help them along with their dreams at the same time … whilst, of course, they are helping you along with your dreams.

That’s the kind of world I want to live in.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Cheers

Owen

PS: My mom always wanted to ride in a yellow convertible.  I saw one at a car rental place on my way to visit her in the hospital.  She was ill, dying in fact, but she could have gotten a pass for an hour or two had I rented that car and taken her for a ride.  When I proposed the idea to her it was too late.  She was no longer interested in an idea that had been on her mind for as long as I had known her.  Her dream had died before it had been realized.  That memory plays on my mind and is in part the inspiration for human kindness clubs.  Live life with no regrets.  Live those dreams with some sense of urgency too.  When you get stuck and can’t do something for yourself, whatever the reason, others can help … if we ask them to.

Owen

PPS: this article had numbered lists in the original word document, but numbered lists WILL NOT transfer into this format.  Sorry if this looks funny!