Random Acts of Kindness: A one year challenge
Entry #1
I know a young woman. Many good stories start this way, so you just know you will want to read this blog. I can tell. This young woman had a PhD and worked at the National Cancer Institute and the Food and Drug Administration investigating how to help people avoid developing cancers associated with behaviors that often cause cancer.
About a year ago, this young woman was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. Throughout the last year, a community of friends, co-workers and acquaintances rose up to provide practical and emotional support via a Facebook page. Toward the end of this year is when the “Ice Bucket Challenge” went viral and some of this young woman’s friends wanted to do this for her. She did not want this. Instead she asked people to do a random act of kindness and then post back what to her page what it was.
This idea struck something in me and I decided to do it big….well, relatively big. I vowed to do what we now called the Random Act of Kindness Challenge (RAK) every day for a full 6 weeks, the time from when I started to the end of the Government fiscal year. I don’t know why I vowed to do this for this much time. Part of me was like “Woo hoo! Go, me (insert smug dance)” and part of me was like “don’t be such a fucking dumbass, this really matters.” I don’t know why but there was a part of me that realized this was important.
I was part of this community but having been more of an acquaintance than anything else, I had mostly been watching from the fringes, occasionally making supportive comments to FB, donating some sick leave through work, a small cash donation here and there, blah, blah, blah. Not that these things did not matter, I truly believe they did, but they were easy to do from a safe, emotionally distance place. I could feel like I was being a great human being and “nice”, while avoiding having to confront the emotional pain of this human being I knew dying.
I would like to say that it was from powerful psychological insight and awareness of how I was not allowing myself to truly be present for the physical and emotional pain experienced by this young woman and her husband and family and friends that that led me to commitment to 6 weeks of daily RAK. Buttttttt, that would be a stretch. I will say up front that I am pretty fucking smart, a “visionary” leader in my field and am VBVI (very busy, very important. (HA!)), but thinking is not really what I do best. I am more about boyish enthusiasm and the ability to nurture talent in others than the ability to logically, thoughtfully come to the truth.
For whatever reason, I stepped into RAK. I every day since then I have performed a random act of kindness, some kind of big, many small, some of which made someone else’s life easier for a moment, some of which seemed to truly touch people in a meaningful way. I am currently at the end of my 4th week, 2 to go.
This young woman died unexpectedly 2 weeks ago.
I cried when I heard the news. I cried and felt the pain of loss in ways that I would not have if I had not started doing RAK. I don’t know why. I have some ideas why this may have happened, but I am not sure. Something important happened even from doing this for only a few weeks. In all honesty I think I sensed it within the first couple days, but could not put a word on it. I still can’t (Please refer to the above note regarding thinking not being what I do) but I feel it is there. Something has changed. I don’t know if it is a good change (Is there a nomination for a Noble Peace Prize in my future?) or a bad change (Am I moving further down the Evil Genesis track?), or even a change that matters…..or will maintain. But let’s see what happens.
So that is some background on what I am starting….ok, continuing because I SO get credit for the first 4 weeks. I am going to take on the RAK Challenge for a year. Yup 365 days….minus the days I have already done because I did some awesome RAK in that time, plus it would sort of be cheating to imply that I was a super solid RAK-er when I have had 4 weeks of practice. I should probably write the date down somewhere so I know when I am done. I would hate to do extra days.
So where does this blog fit in? At its most basic, I will feel accountable for writing about what is happening. I have a strong need to please and I will feel guilty and like I am letting people down if I don’t write, even if I am the only one who ever reads this. Second, there is something going on here that I want to understand better. Given my lack of thinking (despite being super smart- I want that on the record), writing will help me do some of that thinking and processing outside of my head (which tends to be a loud and cluttered place).
Where do you fit in? First let’s acknowledge that there may not be a you, now or ever, but, if for some reason there was a you, it would be cool if you read about how it is going. No need to do anything else. If for some unexplained reason you wanted to try out some random acts of kindness, that would be amazing and an interesting addition to this experiment. Next blog I will explain the rules, because ever good game has rules. How else do you know if you are winning, right?