Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Last of the deep thoughts

Does anyone else miss Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts. Sigh. They were awesome!

I promise my next post will be of children playing and being cute as buttons, but I haven't been taking pictures and the kids haven't been doing anything terribly cute, thanks to the super cold weather - that is unless you consider playing on their various tablets cute! Which I don't! But warmer weather is coming and so is the cuteness - I can just feel it.

Recently I saw on Facebook an initiative to encourage "random acts of kindness." I love this! Love it! The world can always use more random kindness - this is exciting.

But...

This got my mind whirling. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could start a campaign for "Consistent Consideration." Where we could bring consistent change to our daily lives in how we see others and our concern for their well being.

Take for an example a soar spot for most of us - driving.

Imagine how things would change is we (and I am including myself in this):

- left room between our car and the one in front of us, not only to have the room, but to allow for others to merge into the lane we are in. Positioning our car in a considerate way.

- or upon seeing someone signal that they want to enter the lane we are in, we slowed down and let them in rather than speeding up to get ahead of them.

- or really believed that people merging onto Deerfoot also have the right away as the sign says, and not treating a merge sign as a yield.

In short, what if we treated other drivers with a courteousness that they may or may not deserve. Because as in most things how we treat someone says less about them than it does about us.

If even a few drivers did this it would make life so much more bearable, as I discovered this morning when a driver allowed me to turn on to a very busy road and even smiled at me!

Will this prevent accidents and incidents - no. People are human and make mistakes, machines malfunction. But, wouldn't it be an encouragement.

This is just one example, imagine if everyone in the office put their own dishes in the dishwasher and didn't expect the receptionist to clean up after them. There are a million little things we can do.

I have to confess I am often thoughtless and self absorbed. But I have also discovered that making changes to other people and my surroundings can be quite difficult. Perhaps I could focus on changing myself and my own attitudes, what will be the outcome?

So here is my suggestion. For today lets try to see the world through the eyes of others and try to make the world better for them. It may do nothing to change the world, but I bet it will change us!

What do you think?