creative kindness – lets all play hopscotch

March is creative kindness month at Magical Daydream.

Marielle is always coming up with special little ways to be kind and spread some job in the world. (She has even made a kindness kit full of ideas and supplies to help make a kinder world.)

I’ve always liked the idea of doing something big to spread a little kindness, but have never found the right balance of self confidence, time, and budget.

So I’ve started small. So small that until I actually thought about it, I didn’t actually recognise it as ‘being kind’.
I’m a kind and generous person by nature so smiling at strangers, giving money to people begging, stopping to let people cross at cross walks, and holding doors open for people are just part of being a courteous member of society.

A few weeks ago I had a different kindness experience.
It was a fairly normal Friday night, the boyfriend and I went out for dinner and inexplicably ended up at the Inglewood Hotel. Somehow we always end up there even when we didn’t plan to.
A member of the bar staff who we hadn’t seen there for ages was working so we had a chat with her. There were a couple of other regulars there and a couple of faces we hadn’t seen before.

I ended up hearing the story from a lady who had the most lovely smile I’ve ever seen.
She had a severe stroke during childbirth 7 years ago, so the conversation was fairly slow going but I heard about her son. She loved her son very much and was very proud of him. She was there with her husband who had been in a motorcycle accident some years ago and so there were a few motorbike noises and miming.
Alcohol laws in Australia are pretty specific about not serving alcohol to those who appear intoxicated, so this couple follow around this member of bar staff who is familiar with them and their particular characteristics.

Conversation was slow going, but we got to a point in the conversation where we discovered that we were both born in May.
Earlier that night I had made a wire-wrapped ring with a fake-emerald stone and by the end of the night I had gifted it to her.
I really valued the few sentences that we were able to share and wanted to show her somehow.
It was pretty easy for me to make another one, but that small gesture meant so much to her. Her eyes lit up and she showed her husband and some other friends with such pride in her eyes.

I’m not sharing this to make me look like this really super-awesome person who is kind to everyone, but I wanted to share a story I may not have ordinarily shared with you. I come in contact with a lot of douchecanoes, particularly as I catch public transport am a lady with bright hair who likes sport and drinks beer. Something about that combination seems to attract douchecanoes. To have an awesome, sparkling conversation and developing a connection about something so simple as both being born in the same month was really cool.

I still wanted to do something that I could actually show you all whilst sticking within my comfort level, budget and time restrictions.

And so I invested in a 50c packet of chalk and drew a hopscotch board out the front of our house.
Of course as soon as I did that we had the first rain for 100 days and it partly washed away.
But for that evening, every person walking their dog or taking an evening stroll past out house had the opportunity to play hopscotch.

The message of ‘have fun!’ still remains though.

There’s still 2 weeks left of March, so have some fun, and go over to Marielle’s blog and prepare to share kindness with the world.