High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Kindness’

Spread a little happiness; share a little warmth today.  Light a candle, flash a smile, touch a hand.

Tell someone she’s amazing.  Tell someone that you appreciate his efforts and contributions.

Open a door, give a wink, say thank you, say hello.

Make a call, send a note. Spread some warmth.  Share a little happiness today.

You’ll love how good it makes you feel.

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With words and acts of kindness, happiness rains its gentle joy into all the world’s loneliness and pain.  “Here,” it says to parched hearts, “Have a drink of relief.  Taste its hope.  Know that you are seen and loved.”

With little pearls of kindness, happiness celebrates friendships and gifts strangers, in gratitude for their sheer, wondrous presence in the world.

As it pours out in kindness, requiring no merit, extending itself to all, happiness shows its grace.  As kindness, it dissolves barriers and extends connection.  It invites the recognition of relatedness, one heart to another, to another.

Such is its joy.  Such is its reason for being.

When he learned that he had bone cancer, Mike told me, he had fallen into a long spell of despair.  Life was over.  Close the book.  The future had been erased for him with the mere pronouncement of the diagnosis.

Then one day, while he was sorting through some things, he came across his old high school year book.  He leafed through its pages, transported back in time to the days when the world was filled with possibilities and dreams.

As he read the little messages that his fellow students had written on the book’s pages, one in particular struck him.  It thanked him for what he had meant to the writer, for the way he had touched her life.  Something about her words made him ask, “What ever became of that Mike—the one so full of spirit?”  And he decided then and there that he wasn’t going down without a fight.

He started working out, running, and even entering marathons.  He’s done several of them since.  And while no cure exists for his cancer, he’s in love with life again and making the most of every day he has left.

Through the magic of the Internet, Mike managed to track me down to tell me his story, and to thank me for what I had written in his yearbook those long, long decades ago.  The words had turned his life around when it most needed turning.  From his past came a few sentences to give him hope.  And from my past came Mike, to give me inspiration.