Flawless Kindness By Sandy Goldstein
Can we please each take a look within ourselves? Everyone is now focused on gun control and better mental health advocacy – two very important causes near and dear to my heart. These are both admirable long term goals and I applaud the enthusiastic support for both. But what can each of us do today, right now to make a difference?
What doesn’t get enough attention, in my opinion, is the general meanness and bullying that continues to go on in schools, particularly towards that “weird” kid, that “loser” or that “loner”. Can we please also take the opportunity to re-emphasize to our children (and to ourselves) the importance of just basic human kindness? Perhaps our kids could stop bullying and making fun of the outsiders? Perhaps that little act of kindness, of saying “hi” to someone or inviting that kid to sit with you in the cafeteria can make all the difference in the world. Maybe if we were to go out of our way so that these kids don’t feel alone (I’m thinking Evan Hansen right now) maybe we can also make great progress towards reducing violence in schools? And maybe we could start to see suicide rates going down rather than up?
In no way is this intended to detract from the importance of gun control and mental health advocacy but let’s also please have these conversations with our kids. These are not mutually exclusive.
Sandy
Check out Sandy’s video below on what ‘flawless’ means to him and his reminder to all of us that when we accept people for who they are, we give them the best opportunity to live a happy and healthy life.
