Sunday, December 2, 2012

Kindness leads to Resiliency

It's been a long time since I posted last. Honestly, I thought of writing several times but moving from Puerto Rico to the US, starting a new job and now hurricane Sandy response has kept me too busy to write.

This was also a time full of insights, I just didn't find the time to pen them down and share with you all. One important thing that I relearned is to trust God in the most challenging circumstances. Faith keeps peace intact! Secondly, moving on is the only way if you're alive and the best thing God made was another day. One new insight that I learned was that every stranger is a potential friend!

Yesterday my husband and I attended a conference on 'Resilience' at the National Academy of Sciences in DC. For those resilience is a new word, it simply means the ability to bounce back from an adverse situation. As national experts were talking about their understanding of resilience and culture of resilience in communities, I was trying to summarize their distinct views in one word each.


One word that that came up over and over again was 'kindness'. Kindness is one of the first things I was taught at home, then in the church, after that in the moral science class at school and off course life experiences repeatedly reinforced the importance of kindness. And I here I was in a different continent in a national level conversation and professionals talking about kindness in relation to overcoming from a disaster! 



Kindness is a virtue that is as simple as sharing bread with the hungry to giving a new life through forgiveness to bringing a community back to its feet after a catastrophic event. However, for kindness to make a difference, it has to be part of our lives and thought process. We can't teach kindness to people as part of a disaster response. It has to be an integral part when we think of our neighbors during peace time, no matter how different they look or behave. Kindness is way more than nice words and good deeds. Kindness conquers prejudice and gives way to love, hope and peace.

In the era of video games, i pods and other materialistic environment, let's not forget to give back to our children what we learnt from our elders. Let us teach them kindness through our thought processes, words and actions. Let us find time to manifest kindness through our lives and let it spread to others. 

A kinder community will bring itself up because people will heal each other through care and sharing. Kindness within and outside the community will facilitate its recovery. Yes, a kind community is a resilient community!

No comments:

Post a Comment

I am not OK

I am writing this on behalf of thousands of people, particularly the humanitarian workers around the world, who are not perfectly ok. Many o...