Book review.
Bill and willie Geise
Good Talk, dad
This is a very engaging family memoir by bill Geise a
Monthly Archives: June 2014
Introducing Longreads’ Best of WordPress
Today we’re excited to launch a new series with Longreads, the storytelling community that recently joined the Automattic and WordPress.com Editorial family. And we need your help.
We’re looking for the best long-form stories over 1,500 words, across all of WordPress—a quest that will span 22% of the Internet. It will include work from undiscovered writers, as well as the authors and publishers you already know and love.
Help us find and share the best stories
Authors and publishers: When you post something great that’s over 1,500 words, use the longreads tag on your post so we can consider it. You can also share a link to the story on Twitter: Just reply to @Longreads or include #longreads in your tweet. (If your WordPress site is self-hosted, Twitter is still the best way to reach us.)
Readers: If you find something that you love, share it with us!…
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KINDNESS
Kindness
The importance of kindness in human affairs is not yq new thought. It is a hallmark of most religions. Paul’s beautiful paean to charity or love in chapter 13 of his first letter to the church at Corinth stresses the centrality of kindness to the Christian life.
Confuscius said—“forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.”
The Fourteenth Dali Llama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism said ”be kind whenever possible; it is always possible .”
Islam teaches believers to be kind to others if they wish Allah to show mercy to them.
And less explicitly religious writers , stress the centrality of kindness. Plato said, “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle . “
The Engish poet Wordsworth referred to the “best portion of a good man’s life; the little . nameless ,unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
Given the hoary pedigree of kindness, it is somewhat…
View original post 323 more words
KINDNESS
Kindness
The importance of kindness in human affairs is not a new thought. It is a hallmark of most religions. Paul’s beautiful paean to charity or love in chapter 13 of his first letter to the church at Corinth stresses the centrality of kindness to the Christian life.
Confuscius said—“forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.”
The Fourteenth Dali Llama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism said ”be kind whenever possible; it is always possible .”
Islam teaches believers to be kind to others if they wish Allah to show mercy to them.
And less explicitly religious writers , stress the centrality of kindness. Plato said, “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle . “
The Engish poet Wordsworth referred to the “best portion of a good man’s life; the little . nameless ,unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
Given the hoary pedigree of kindness, it is somewhat surprising that an English professor at Syracuse University , George Saunders, should cause a stir with a commencement address on kindness last year
Saunders’ speech laid out some of his missed opportunities to be more kind . These were small incidents but he remembered them as some of the principal regrets of his life. He also speculated that these failures of kindness may go back to human predisposition to be self centered ;to see one’s own story as the most important; to not appreciate the connectedness of our brief lives to other people and to harboring a secret belief (wrongheaded to be sure) in our own immortality. He further speculates that these misconceptions may have helped our species make it so far, survival of the fittest and all that.
There is another related phenomenon gaining acceptance—the explicit teaching of kind behavior to elementary students. Some schools bring in an infant and use that presence of an adorable needy sometimes crying infant to teach the kids empathy and compassion. I often see my daughter teach her 4 year old about kindness and it works.
I have a friend who upon leaving the private law business , ran a foundation teaching children how to properly and kindly interact with students with disabilities.
Professor Saunders also maintained that most people become more kind as they grow older.Life has a way of kicking us in the teeth when we least expect it.. It may be an
experience in the workplace, family difficulties, health problems, death of a loved one etc. For most people , such experiences should create opportunities for learning about kindness and practicing it. Thus, I t may be older people who may be best positioned to teach our youth about kindness.
Wouldn’t it be cool to develop a curriculum of kindness and then do a head to head longitudinal study to see if it made a difference 5 , 10, 15 years later.
The Owl of Minerva 