Kindness nearer than ever

The world seems to become less and less friendly as a place to live in.

Please do not fall for this great fallacy!

There are no real statistics about friendliness and caring societies.
One thing, I am perfectly sure however, is that the picture we get
from the news is a WRONG picture.

True enough, what happens in the USA is troublesome.
What happens in so many other countries is troublesome

But we see only the troublesome things in the news.
Good news seems to be not "newsworthy" these days.

The idea of a worldwide caring society
The idea of eradication of hunger in the world
The idea of peace
The idea of a kindness revolution

These are all ideas (and there are many more) whose time has come.
Perhaps what we see in the US is a necessary evil to speed up the final
collapse of the opposites of the above ideas.
Like waves gaining momentum as they near the shore,
but collapsing on the shore,
the life of these ideas (like selfishness, fear mongering,...)
will totally, absolutely and irreversibly end.

While they collapse on the shore they may cause damage
but never will the mountain of justice
the mountain of kindness
the mountain of caringness
the mountain of love
the mountain of respect
be moved by any of these vicious waves.

Please, my friends,
Stop reading all that negativity,
keep building within your own society
on a principle of caring kindness.

The kindness revolution is my favorite idea whose time has come
Its time is really here and nothing will stop it.

Feeling good

A beggar on the corner of the street

I turn away from him , I don’t look

He might not be truly in need

Afraid that he may be a crook

But perhaps only half of the beggars

Are really crooked and often cheat

But how about the other half of them

Who are truly in trouble and big need?

Now what would disturb more my peace of mind?

To have given money to a beggar who cheats?

Or to have been too afraid and worried and

not have given anything to one with true big needs?

Too many times we are afraid to give:

Let us consider a small algorithm.

1. The beggar is a crook

You do not give.                          Crook feels bad           You feel bad

(because you are not sure he was a crook and refusing to give makes you feel bad, deprives you a bit of your full peace of mind, no matter what)

2. The beggar is genuine 

You do not give                           Genuine feels bad        You feel bad

Now let us consider the other situation: 

3. Crook

You give                                        Crook feels bad            You feel good

(a crook cheating people will have a few moments of joy but feels bad in the end no matter what)

(you feel good, since you do not know it is a crook)

4. Genuine                                     Genuine feels good        You feel good

Now decide which action is the best :)

Kindness or integrity?

Is it better to choose kindness or integrity?


I have a bit of an A personality and in the past, I have found fault with many people. I used to confront, without much thinking, not being kind but feeling right. This has brought myself sometimes in some trouble. Sometimes the trouble was worth it, more often not. I have in the process definitely hurt people unnecessarily, which causes afterwards regrets and sorrow.

Over the years I have mellowed down quite a bit. I have slowly learned, I think, to postpone the immediate confrontation. This eliminated the impulsive (angry) reaction, that was causing often more damage than good. Giving myself some time to digest and look at it from a distance, often made me see how small and unworthy of further attention the case was. However if after a few days, the thing was still bothering me, I was capable of addressing the matter in a much more efficient way than during my younger years when I give more in to my type A thing. This being said, this does not mean I succeed all the time to avoid immediate confrontation. I think a certain level of self control is something we can exercise like our muscles and become stronger in it over time, but it never reaches absoluteness, I think.

As time went on, I have become a bit of a believer in unconditional love. That would favor the kind over the integrity approach. However we still need to remain assertive and not give up on trying to improve situations and conditions around us. Nowadays I tend to pray for guidance on how to deal best with situations, especially if they tend to become very difficult. If I do that, persistently, almost always solutions present themselves in sometimes unexpected ways.

If I sincerely look back on my own life, I have not always been an angel myself. That is to put it softly. I think my biggest asset over time, has been my regular reflection. I have often tried hard to do things right but so often too, it went terribly wrong. But reflecting on the mistakes and also on our perceived successes, is something I have always enjoyed and has contributed (and is still contributing) in a major way to my personal growth.

Here is a thought that appeared in my head while writing the above: If people do things that are obviously wrong, they often do quite a number of (other) things obviously right as well. If we focus on the right things for long enough, we may manage to become close enough of friends to guide and inspire them in a very positive way. (???)


Hans

A dream

" I have a dream "
The words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Look at the people around you.
Each of them has a dream
Likely, each of them have a dream of peace
Likely, each of them longs for truth
Likely, each of them longs for love,
for being loved and for being able to give love.



To say with the words of Rickie Byars

"Let us love, love love, 

love even when it is hard to love

Share, share, share,

even when it is hard to share

Our loving will change the world

Our sharing will change the world..."

In the uncertain times, we are living in

This is definitely what we have to !!!

At the time when half of the Americans are scared of what their new president will

bring to the country and perhaps more than 99 percent of the rest of the world are scared 

of what that man will mean to the world,

We have to keep our dreams alive,

We have to keep our ideals alive.

No matter what happens 

the majority, the huge majority of us wants peace

and love and joy and harmony and goodness

Let us keep this dream alive, 

no matter what happens in some parts of the world. 

Actually our Creator has already given us 

peace and joy and happiness; 

all we have to do is open our hearts, our minds, our souls to it

and I am certain that soon in all parts of the world

there will be more people understanding this giant truth

open up to peace and love

find and give and share it with everyone they meet.

What we think and feel

The evening sun shone its magic light

on the trees along the white sand shore

a superb scene, a pure delight,

an amazing sight, rarely seen before

My thoughts were filled with love

Feelings warm, affable and kind;

perhaps they came from high above;

filled my heart, flowing to my mind

In the middle of my lovely walk,

So many children playing in the sand

stopped their game to come and talk 

we laughed and they became my friend

These children's love that came my way

Somehow it made me understand

that what happens to us day by day

does on what we think and feel, depend 

I wrote this little poem after a walk on the beach.
The beach was sooo beautiful that my mind was really filled
with lovely positive thoughts and feelings.
I think that what we think and feel is really
determining what does come and what does not come our way.
If we think positive thoughts, we behave positively
and nice things come our way.
The opposite is true for negative thoughts too.
Hope you enjoyed the poem and the little bit of wisdom in it...

Simple

Simple good deeds:
Happiness is really that simple.

We do simple good deeds
and peace of mind and happiness flow in torrential currents

And yet...
So many people seem to be ignorant of that;
unforgivably ignorant of that simple giant truth
Here comes my simple story from today:

I was in Kuala Lumpur. My car's battery was empty.
I had starting cables in the trunk and asked a few drivers
in the parking the lot, to help me by letting me use their
battery for 10 seconds to start my car.

The first one said he was too much in a hurry.
After he parked his car, he got out and walked to the exit of the parking.
When he saw we were looking at him, he suddenly changed his pace,
was visibly embarrassed and pretended to rush.
We were not helped, the guy missed an opportunity to do a simple good deed.

A few more people we addressed told us other cheap excuses, other people simply ignored us.
Is that the level of development, life in a big city has brought about?
Finally we got helped by a taxi driver, who was perhaps much poorer than the people we asked before. But he helped with a smile and did not ask for anything in return. This guy seemed so much wiser, cleverer and surely he seemed much happier then the stressful faces of the drivers who refused to help or ignored us all together.

I still believe that the world is getting better with time, but we, kind people,
have still a distance to go before enough people will be inspired by our good deeds
to initiate a avalanche-like kindness revolution.
It will come, we just have to be persistent.
Our persistence will bring us the joy and happiness simple good deeds bring.
On top of that, our persistence will slowly but surely change the world for good.

Loyalty

"I want to work, and the institution I work is like my own. I will do whatever it takes to take the institution to a higher level."

"I think the institution is exploiting me. They expect to much of me in comparison to what I am paid."

The above two are the opposite poles of the employee who chooses to enjoy his work, no matter what, to serve the clients, as good as he or she can just because they are committed versus the employee who is not trusting the company too much who is afraid of being exploited and who becomes really calculative in the process.

While most of us are not at either ends of he spectrum of loyalty versus distrust, most of us either lean a bit more to one or the other side.

If we think about it, a bit deeper, from the point of view, which one is most useful for ourselves?

If we are generous and loyal, and do even more than we are paid for, we have a much bigger chance to be appreciate by clients. Even if management does appreciate our efforts, what we get from our clients will be such a source of peace and satisfaction, that I think:
Please enjoy your job, do your very best, serve clients no matter what. The risk of people taking advantage of me is never absent but if I become calculative and filled with distrust, it will mainly affect my own level satisfaction and happiness.

So we are much better off, choosing the above approach number one than number two.

I wish you all, so much love and job satisfaction in your life that peace of mind is never far away.
 :)

PS: It was Napoleon Hill who said: doing more than you are paid for is one of the surest ways to being paid for more than you do.

Should be like this

This afternoon having with my lovely wife, a coffee and a piece of cake in the coffee shop, the coffee bean in Kuantan. Shortly after we sit down, the woman at the table next to us announces that the battery of her phone was almost flat. She was sitting alone at the table and clearly was telling this to my wife. She plugged the telephone into a powerbank. She asked my wife whether she was from Kuantan and a nice conversation followed. 

As we were sitting there her daughter and her nephew came and sit with her and she asked the two children to shake hands with us. 

I thought the encounter was a bit unusual. People in a coffee shop or even on a bus tend to be too shy or too afraid of rejection to start a conversation. Really each time I started a conversation on a plane with the person next to me, I have enjoyed it. I always make plans to do it more, but all too often we are not doing it.

Easy communication, friendliness, kindness, can make all our world so much nicer.

The world of tomorrow

The world of tomorrow may be very different than the world of today.


When I remember my recent visit to India,
I think that a country like that is really one that may gain
in importance and influence in the not so distant future.

It is so hard to make any progress while we are inundated with the capitalist mindset.
That being said, i admire the rich and amazing culture of India.
I think that India has really the seeds, perhaps more than other nations,
to create a loving society based on kindness and non-violence.
The road to such a society is long and progress may be extremely slow,
but something deep inside of me is believing that this is where the world is heading.

India,
a vast country with more than 1 billion people.
The population is having a love for education
They keep alive a legacy of leaders like Mahatma Ghandi.
Respect for elderly and respect for spirituality is still a solid ingredient of society
There is a lot of simple happiness even among the poorest in the rural areas.

If it would happen that the USA loses its status as world power,
I really think that India is the best positioned country to take its place.
It are people with wisdom, a hunger for truth and generosity
that will be our leaders of tomorrow.

The greedy wall street gurus are close to their apoptosis.
Apoptosis is is not a common word, but it means programmed cell death.
Human cells and also cells from other organisms have a built-in mechanism
to die when the time of their function is over.
So it goes with human ideas.
An idea whose time has come, is unstoppable.
But an idea that has become obsolete goes in self-destructive mode.

I have a positive view on the future.
Sturdy capitalists may go through a tough time in the coming years,
but life will be better ten years from now.
The future belongs to the wise, to the the searchers of truth, to the generous.

I believe that, no, rather I know that.

True nature

Dear Friends,

I was reading some of my poems on Poemhunter (link)
I found this small prayer/poem, I had written for my "sister"-blog,
which is named, small prayers for a big world
(http://smallprayersforabigworld.blogspot.my/).

I wrote it about a year ago but reading it again was a pleasure to my heart.
I hope it will be a pleasure to you, my dear reader, too:

True nature

This is a small prayer
for all people
in this big world
to become aware
of our true nature
which is love
which is kindness
which is compassion
which is peace
which is harmony.

A small prayer
for all of us
to become aware
that only a life
filled with our true nature
is THE source of
true happiness

Help me, my God,
Help all my friends
all my family
all my colleagues
all my neighbors
and all, all others
in this big world
to love, be kind, compassionate
and be an instrument of
Your peace and harmony

Let this count as a heartfelt new-years wish to all

Ups and Downs

Every life has ups and downs.
This year, yes the one that is three days old today,
looks like I have had three quite big downs.

But after the darkest hour of the night, comes dawn.
So time to anticipate some ups, I would say.

Life is not always easy.
But when it seems to get really tough
sometimes coincidences start to happen that give you a smile :)

This morning I wanted to change my next week teaching slot with a lecturer because next week I 'll have a meeting in KL. When I took my phone to call her, I received a message from that lecturer asking me to change with her exactly that teaching slot.

Then at noon, I went to eat with my wife in a place in front of the hospital. It was raining cats and dogs. We had to cross the road (among the busiest roads in town) and as coincidence wanted it, the traffic lights seemed to play a game so no cars were on the road while we crossed going and also while we came back.

I love to think that coincidences like these were meant to cheer me up a bit.

All of us make mistakes, all of us have our own life challenges. Keeping an eye open for the miracle of life and the beauty of nature, may help us make the hardest moments a bit softer.

Wishing you all a very good year.

Hans