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Random Acts of Kindness (RAOK)

A colleague remarked t'other day how random acts of kindness (according to a study) were shown to make people sadder!

I think that's a little bizarre cos, in my experience, RAOK, actually make you feel great, in the sense of knowing that you did something selfless, purposely for the benefit of someone else.

There is of course an irony in that through doing these things you do actually help yourself, it does make you smile inside to do so, so perhaps it isn't so selfless after all. I think that's an outcome most would be happy to live with though and so for me, it's win win all the way to the feel good factor bank.

Anyways, the point of this post wasn't simply to talk about random acts of kindness for the sake of them, no, it was to also suggest a few ideas for today, that you can do very easily, at next to no cost.

I'm gonna put a few, maybe you can add a few in the comments. :

• Pay the toll on a toll bridge for the person behind you
• Volunteer - there's 100's of organisations that need help, go find one and step up!
• Leave the price of a pint in the pump and tell the barman to let the next person buying a sole pint have it on the house
• Go to the local old peoples centre and take them in a big cake and offer to help make the tea
• Go buy a 'thinking of you' card and send it to a friend or relative you have'nt spoke to for a while
• If you are in the supermarket and get one of these 5p off your fuel things, or nectar point things that you don't collect, then give them to a friend or the person behind you - costs nothing

So there you have it, go make the world a better place, practice a few random acts of kindness ;0)

Breezes sail on summer seas, drift across the glades with ease
Poppies sway as milked by bees, looked on down by big oak trees

Meadow scent that drives the birds, across the plains above great herds
Over rivers, across small dales, past laughing kids and wagging tails

Invisibly sailing up and down, taking leaves from off the ground
Picking up pace or going slow, swirling around bright streets below

Powered by sun and tidal spree, fanned by waves we cannot see
Waiting for night to quieten down, the breeze no more we all sleep sound

Writing this morn seems kinda tough, the keyboard taps are not enough

Write a line and start a new, backspace, delete, review review

Mental block no inspiration, lack of vision, unknown causation

Trying hard to find a verve, to find a point of textual swerve

Words that'll speak of stuff unsaid, painting pictures in ones head

Creating joins from line to line, joins with flow, not asinine

Making sense in simple steps, no point trying to perplex

Words right now of absence be, put on screen for all to see

Eyes of chocolate full of light
Signals pulse all deep and bright
Locks that bounce all soft and flowing
Sensuous looks of absence knowing
Heart of pause of trips unknown
Removing layers encased in stone

I've been reading a very cool book by Alain De Botton. It's called How Proust Can Change Your Life
.

For those of you who don't know, Marcel Proust was a French essayist and novelist who was well known for In Search of Lost Time
a literary  effort of considerable length and critical acclaim. One of the things you'll find when reading Proust is how he could extend things out and get extremely granular and nuanced, addressing things that are usually unsaid or unnoticed.There's definitely something cool in that, as perception and interpretation can often lead us down a multitude of paths; most of which tend to double back on themselves or cross over.

In any case, it isn't for me to critique or comment too extensively upon the dude as my only real reference point is that of what De Botton uncovered and presented in his condensed view on the man and his work and life.In the book , De Botton referenced how he wrote 30 pages on the problem of being unable to sleep one night. Apparently, the piece went up and down and around and about and in and out with little real outcome. People of his time, remarked around how what he had said, could have been condensed into words like "I can't sleep, hrrrumph".

So in semi Proustian style I'm going to write about the crashing of a wave. Don't worry, I'm not going to go into 6000 words or a 20ft long blog, just a simple little piece that tries to inject a little elongation, a little romanticism, a little evocation, something simple, everlasting, powerful, cyclilic, natural etc.

The idea was borne of a tweet whilst sitting on a beach - a tweet for those unfamilair is 140 characters long and resides on the micro blogging platform twitter.

Waves are curling & bending like falling titans slain by the trident of Poseidon pulling them back as they flee the tyranny of the sea

It occured to me that Proust would have been absolutely awful at twitter, as brevity it would seem was not his bag. The above was my mickey take at what might have been his effort on the observation of a wave hitting the shoreline. A simple, yet amazing thing that we've all sat and started and wondered about, so without further ado, here it is.

Proustian Shoreline Waves

Waves are curling and bending like falling titans slain by the trident of Poseidon pulling them back as they flee the tyranny of the sea.

The shoreline hisses at the slaying of its foe, retreating in disdain at the loss of its prize, shattered into a million beads of defeated evaporated power

The vanquished drops retreat back down, bubbling frothing angry sounds, rushing back to join the masses, railing forth to make more splashes

Yet Poseidon there will always lay, ready to fight, to catch, to slay, the sea with all its swell and might, kept at bay throughout the night.