Some Christmas Kindness 12-24-2011

The CMU-Specific Karma Diary has a second post!  Way to go, my fellow nerds!

Often times, people go about their daily lives and rarely take notice to those who work to make our lives easier, better, and safer.  It's not that we don't care; it's just that we often take these actions for granted.  For my random act of kindness, I wanted to show that we actually do notice, and we do appreciate their hard work.  My apartment complex has a group of security guards who keep our apartment safe and offer help to those who need it.  They generally stay in a guard shack by the entrance of the garage.  It's always nice to walk home and see a guard welcome you back in with a smile and wave.  I thought it would be nice to return the favor to them by showing my appreciation.  Keeping with the holiday spirit, I put together a gift basket full of Asian goodies for the guards to share and wrote them a Christmas card telling them thanks for all that they do.  It's not much, but I hope this gesture shows them that their actions do not go unnoticed.

Warm wishes,

Lenny

12-13: Here's to the Brothers of Sigma

I am a very proud brother of the Pennsylvania Theta branch of Sigma Phi Epsilon, a national social fraternity.  Why am I so proud to be an alumnus?  Well, they emphasize being scholars, leaders, athletes, and gentlemen.  To me, that seems pretty good and kindness definitely fits in to the SigEp mission.

This holiday season, I decided that I would take advantage of the super low-cost of shipping with USPS and make some care packages for my fraternity brothers...especially those that I haven't been able to see in several years.  I made an epic amount of baked goods---gingerbread men, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cups, cupcakes, fudge, etc. and put them in the USPS "if it fits, it ships" boxes.

I shipped them off to four different clusters of SigEps, namely people in New York City, Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, and Mississippi.  Every single one of my brothers is exceptionally amazing, but I decided to motivate my little brother in Mississippi with a karma diary.

Every day, my little brother is fighting to close the achievement gap through Teach for America.  As I mentioned before, I have a soft spot for teachers, so I definitely try to help in any way that I can.  Unfortunately, distance preludes some of the direct action that I'd like to take, so I'm mainly there for moral support.

To me, there is nothing more rewarding than doing a random act of kindness and reflecting on all of the privileges that we have.  Thus, I hope that he gets a similar joy from receiving the karma diary....and 5 lbs of cookies.

Happy Holidays!
-James

11-12: A MidWesterner's Take

I am a yinzer proper.  I have no qualms about admitting the fact the fact that I didn't realize that "slippy" wasn't a word until my second year of university.  I'm okay with it.  One thing that Pittsburgh teaches us, is that Philadelphia is a horrible, horrible place to be, filled with desolation and despair.

Unfortunately, I think that my childhood musings were incorrect.  Especially, as my karma diary is making it all over Philadelphia!  In our third venture of the city, we hear from "A" who is a Midwestern transplant that is fighting to bring those values to the East Coast.

Three cheers for A!  Three more for kindness!

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Nov. 12, 2011

I’ve given quite a bit of thought to the subject of kindness lately.  You see, a couple of years ago, I moved from the Midwestern United States to the East coast.  This was a very large culture shock for me, because it doesn’t appear that the same standards of kindness apply out here.  It just seems that kind acts such as holding the door open for someone and every day conversations with strangers are things that are just done in the Midwest.  I’ve been told that we seem overly friendly and perhaps, not genuine, but I think these every day small acts of kindness are so important that they should not be overlooked.

It is because of this, that I try to make sure I do kind acts every day; holding the door or elevator open for people, telling strangers on the street that their bags are open and they are about to lose all of their papers, etc. Sometimes, it seems important to spend hours talking to friends who are hurting or have problems that need a friendly and non judgmental ear.

However, this wonderful journal idea has inspired me to take this kindness one step further.  Tomorrow, I will help out my church’s religious education program in making Christmas ornaments for under privileged youth to receive books for the holidays.

-A