Celebrate World Kindness Day

World Kindness Day November 13th

Spread kindness wherever you go-its free and goes a long way.

During the rest of November and into December Ever Ready will post ideas to keep acts of kindness going right through 2022 into 2023.

1. Donate to a local food pantry and/or thrift shop
2. Volunteer for a worthy cause
3. Start a gratitude journal-be good to yourself
4. Support and buy local whenever you can
5. Share dinner with a neighbor or friend
6. Donate a coat
7. Thank a cashier for their service
8. Volunteer to drive someone who needs some extra help
9. Pay for someone’s meal
10. Thank a veteran
11. Show your gratitude to a loved one
12. Write a note of appreciation and/or text someone a note of cheer
13. Offer someone words of encouragement
14. Let someone else have the parking spot
15. Donate to Toys for Tots
16. Make someone a handmade gift
17. Help a neighbor put out their garbage cans curbside.18. Email or call an old friend
19. Donate to a local rescue or animal shelter
20. Thank your local police and firemen
21. Thank your delivery drivers
22. Be more courteous and patient driving
23. Let someone checkout before you
24. Bake something for a friend or loved one
25. Return someone’s cart for them
26. Compliment a loved one
27. Send flowers to someone
28. Hold the door for someone
29. Thank a healthcare worker
30. Check on a neighbor-see if needs something
31. Shovel someone's sidewalk

"Kindness"
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

From "Words Under the Words: Selected Poems." Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.