In a world where acts of kindness seem rare and random, what makes this act of kindness notable?
Last Wednesday I opened my laptop and there they were, Sheena and Jacqueline, in a photo, grinning at me from Stuttgart at the 3-day beVisioneers Global Summit.
Sheena is the Mentorship Lead for the Do School and Jacqueline Cruz-Aguila is my Mentee from Mexico City, Mercedes Benz Fellowship beVisioneers selected to attending. I have never met them in person. The number of times I’ve met them virtually, I can count on both hands. And yet my heart burst wide open. So much awe, wonder, and joy spilled out. My reaction was raw, rapid, and reflexive. I wondered why.
We miss so much in our day to day, going fast, faster, and fastest. We scramble to embrace new ways in which AI allows us to escape the mundane, saving us from having to make sense from swamps of data. But I didn’t have to ask Chat GPT to reflect for me, to think for me, to feel for me. All I had to do was stop, savour, and say, “There IS good in this world.”
Sharing this photo was notable because of Sheena and Jacqueline’s:
- intention.
- execution.
- recognition.
- tenderness.
- empathy.
- spontaneity.
What would happen if acts of kindness weren’t rare and random? Would our hearts suffer from being open? Would our hands hurt from being extended? Or would our lives flourish from being kind? What does it take? Ask Sheena and Jacqueline.