Asterisk Monthly: About Kindness [June, 2020]
Writing Prompt: Acts of Kindness
Asterisk Project: International Creative Writing
June, 2020. This world can be a difficult and dark place, but gestures of kindness — big or small — can light it up. For this prompt we asked our group to think about the kindnesses they’ve seen, heard about and/or experienced. Here’s what we got, enjoy!
Ana Azevedo
I’m finding it harder and harder to appreciate any acts of kindness at this point in time. I’m not saying I don’t see them. Or that I don’t feel them. On the contrary, I see and feel kindness every single day either watching people getting out of their way to help others on TV or when I get a tiny “How are you?” text on my phone. Big or small, I see kindness — and I try to give it back to the world, everyday. Nevertheless, evil seems to be winning. It seems stronger and tougher. It’s ugly and it’s always in your face. It makes me feel apathy for all the acts of kindness around me, I suppose. Is it easier to assume people’s intentions are not good? My guess is yes.
Personally, it takes so much energy to rejoice on kindness right now. But while it’s only getting harder to see the good in the world I’m still here — trying — everyday.
Beatriz Cunha
When I think about kindness I always think about one person in specific. I never actually met someone that thinks so much about the others and sometimes sacrifice their own good for the benefit of others. She taught me so much without knowing she was making me a better person. She doesn’t say much about this acts of kindness, but she’s always welling to help someone that needs. And I think kindness is all about this: helping someone without thinking about what it’s going to bring to you, helping just because you feel that you need to. And even if you can’t help, you can support, you can smile and be carismatic when you can’t do much else.
Giedrius
When I had a clinic visit, I got dizzy, almost couldn’t hear and I felt like my eyesight was almost gone. Nurse and a random woman helped me with water and looked after me until I rested on the coach. It was a simple gesture of kindness from random people when I needed help the most and it showed me that there are some good people left in this cruel world where almost everything is about money.
Gabriela Prado
Kindness can be a place, a memory, a food, a person…
I love to see and hear how different people describe different sensations of kindness for and from themselves, like it’s the only existent way to feel or do the gestures of kindness. When you love someone and you care for that person, you put as a goal do everything you can to make them smile, to make a bad day turn into a common, but safe, space to be you or just to unburden. When you really love, sometimes you can put yourself in second place, just for a tiny moment, to try to be better and be there. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, unless you know you also need to be kind with yourself too.
The real meaning of kindness comes from places and people that you trust and know that will be better or will make you feel better. The best way to share your feelings about kindness is doing things without hoping for something back. Do it because you feel you can and you feel you need to. Genuine gestures of kindness are powerful — and powerful people need to trust in other powerful ones.
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