Acts of Kindness

At the end of November, I joined a website called Bloggy Moms because I liked the look of their community.  Here I found the December Blog Dare - a dare to write blog posts every day of December with convenient writing prompts for each day.  While I have more than enough opinions to write every day, I liked the prompts so I joined the Blog Dare and began.

This worked well for the first 3 days.  I wrote my opinions and I read some wonderful posts by other women.  But then came December 4th - topic:  Acts of Kindness.

While I understand why this topic is part of the December Blog Dare, I dislike the assumption that December is somehow a month for acts of kindness.  On the contrary, I believe that people should do random acts of kindness year round.

Personally, I love doing random acts of kindness. Over the span of my life, I've bought different people a cup of coffee, helped to change tires, opened doors, and given people gas money. Once, while traveling home with three kids and a mostly-full minivan, my husband pulled over for a woman limping next to a broken down car. It turned out she had a flat tire, a dead cell phone, a sprained ankle, no spare, and no extra money because she was driving home. We gave her a lift to the next exit, found a man to repair her tire, and paid him to do the job. She cried and wanted to send us the money, but we refused because sometimes a person just need a little help.

And yet, in this one month, people tend to act like the person they claim to be or wish to be year round.  People act nicer, kinder, more patience, more considerate - they suddenly realize that money isn't as important as helping someone buy groceries.  The compassion of the human spirit shines in December.

While I find it refreshing to see such kindness, I also feel immense sadness that this happens only once a year.