Читать книгу Kindness: The Little Thing that Matters Most - Jaime Thurston, Jaime Thurston, Jessica Ball - Страница 8

Introduction

‘Urgently needed – rugs.’ That was the message that started everything. I was searching online for second-hand furniture, when I came across the plea for help. It was a Wanted ad placed by a woman who sounded desperate. I emailed her and was heartbroken by what I learned. She needed the rugs to cover her broken floor so her young children wouldn’t cut their feet. She was a single mum who had fled a horrifying domestic situation and was starting all over again with nothing. I wanted to help her, and I was sure that if others knew about her, they would want to help, too. So I spread the word among my friends and family, and household goods soon started pouring in.

I delivered everything to her one afternoon – piles of bedding, furniture, kitchenware, clothing, toys and some gift vouchers. I will never forget the look on her face when she opened the door. She was in complete shock that people she didn’t even know would be willing to help her. This was a woman very much in need of kindness, and strangers helped her feel loved when she needed it the most.

I wanted to do more … I wanted to do this every week. And so 52 Lives was born. It started life as a simple Facebook page I set up so my friends and family could help people, but over the weeks, months and years, it grew into a global community of people who wanted to spread kindness and help others.

Each week, we choose someone, somewhere in the world, in need of help, share their story on our website and social media pages, request what they need, and our supporters offer help. It’s based on the premise that people are good and want to help one another – and that lots of good people working together can achieve amazing things.

52 Lives helps anyone, from anywhere, with anything; our only criterion is that the person is in need of kindness. In the few years since 52 Lives began, we have changed people’s lives in such a wonderful variety of ways – from buying teeth for a man in Alabama to building a sensory shed for a toddler in south London who was losing her sight, making video messages for a young boy being bullied, supplying wheelchairs to children in China and the UK, and sending a little girl and her grandmother on a holiday after the death of the girl’s mother.

Although we give people tangible help, the philosophy behind it goes much deeper than simply supplying goods or services. The people we help all say the same thing; that it wasn’t the ‘thing’ we gave them that changed their life, it was the kindness … the fact that complete strangers cared about them. The people we help are going through quite difficult times and when you’re in those situations, a little bit of kindness can make all the difference in the world.

A homeless asylum seeker from London called Maria was a perfect example of this. I read about Maria in a newspaper and contacted the journalist who wrote the article to see if we could help. Maria was raped, had fallen pregnant and was homeless.

With just weeks until her baby was due, she was lost in the system and receiving very little help from social services because of issues with her paperwork. She was finally given a room in a shared house just before her baby was born, but she had nothing and nobody to help her. I set up an Amazon wishlist for Maria and filled it with everything I could think of that she might need to care for her baby. I was actually a little worried we might not be able to help her – I was aware asylum can be a controversial issue and I thought I might end the week having to buy all the goods on the list myself! But I shared it on the 52 Lives website and stood back and watched as every single item on the list was bought – within an hour. These gifts helped Maria enormously, but more importantly, she didn’t feel alone any more. And this human connection is what changes lives. Not just for the person receiving but also the person giving. Kindness changes all of us.

David Hamilton, a best-selling author, doctor and expert in the science of kindness, has written so much about the benefits of being kind. Through his work and his books, he has managed to use science to explain what the rest of us perhaps knew intuitively but couldn’t verbalise – kindness makes us feel good, mentally and physically. I am a big fan of David’s and feel honoured to have his support for this book. Many of his facts and figures about the science of kindness are peppered throughout these pages.

The most important thing I think we can learn is that being kind doesn’t have to be about making grand gestures, or spending a lot of money or setting up your own charity – that’s not what changes the world. Doing something (doing anything) to help another human being is what changes the world. And so I have filled this book with 52 ideas for incorporating more kindness into your world, because kindness is essential for our collective well-being.

Whatever your political views, the last couple of years have been filled with turmoil and uncertainty. But we are not powerless. A famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead, once said: ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ Her words sum up the whole philosophy of 52 Lives and the aim of this book. Our everyday actions determine the kind of world we live in; it’s the little things that matter most. So let’s choose kindness.