a kind of kindness

In the past week I have become acutely aware of two of my most extreme character flaws -- well three, if I count my tendency to use excessive amounts of dish soap to wash painfully few dishes; I always do have the cleanest dishes though. One of the flaws is really more of a bad habit, a minor flaw, and only aggravating to myself. The other one, needs seriously, for my peace of mind as well as for the comfort and well being of those who have to interact with me, to be addressed.

So I am going to refocus my mind on the daily virtues in the book by Linda Kavelin Popov 'Sacred Moments', which was previously the back bone of my blogs, as well as a renewing, and hopefully, productive way to live each day. (I have decided that focusing on the bad, will only glorify it and it seems pointless to be keeping who I don't want to be at the front of my mind. We will see how this goes.)

Diving right in, the virtue of this past week has been kindness. I don't know if it is that I am rarely kind, or if I was just having an overly morose and self-centered week, but focusing on being kind was an unexpected challenge. At least if I was not as kind as I should have been in all situations, I noticed and acknowledged how unkind I was. I noticed the kindness in people around me and that made me feel better. For instance, I saw an older man drop his bag of groceries on a busy street and a young guy with headphones in and neon hightops on chased an apple down the pavement and brought it back to the man. I know this is a brief and superficial look into kindness but I am in a limbo between exhaustion and needing to get this written so I can mentally move on to next(this) weeks virtue: order.

Also late last week Florence passed away. The funeral was a suitably peaceful event as she was 97 years old and had passed in her sleep, but it definitely made me stop and pause and re-examine a lot of what I am doing with my life. In my previous post about Florence, I ended by saying that I had her by my side and I knew there was nothing she couldn't teach me. I pray that she is still by my side.