Our First Project - A Random Act of Kindness

            In The Year of Living Joyfully my daughter has suggested a number of projects that when done will, hopefully, result in an experience of joy. This is a wonderful idea that shows a great deal of insight into the nature of depression.

Depressed people have a difficult time thinking about others. It is not, necessarily, that they are more self-centered than the average person. It is simply that it can seem like an impossible task to see beyond the borders of their own pain. Most depressed people withdraw into themselves and their world extends only to the outer edge of their anguish. When the blanket of sadness is covering us we sufferers tend to live our lives within our tormented selves.

The suggestion of doing a project that, if successful, will result in an experience of Joy is a great idea. It gets us moving and doing. It gets us out of just dwelling in our unhappy minds and into the world of other people. Movement is so important to the profoundly sad who otherwise can remain trapped and immobile. The Dalai Lama has said that “happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”

But, not only was doing a project a terrific idea, so was the specific project that my daughter suggested. Understanding how hard it is for the depressed person to think about others, the first project in The Year of Living Joyfully was to do a Random Act of Kindness for another person. Focusing on being a blessing to others gives us an opportunity to be intentional about moving the center of our attention off of ourselves and our pain and thinking instead about someone else. That’s what I did yesterday.

My wife is joining me in the plan. For our first Random Act of Kindness project we decided to do something to bless a dear friend of ours from one our former churches. She and my wife were on the staff together at that church and has been a good and faithful friend for many years. When I started to think of who I might want to bless with an act of kindness she immediately came to mind.

So we went to the garden center at the local Kmart and bought a small, inexpensive pot of flowers. I’m not a plant guy, so I can’t say what kind of flowers we got her. But they were tall and had bright orange blossoms. As soon as I saw them they struck me as “happy flowers” and that seemed just right to be a blessing.

With flowers and pot in hand my wife and I headed off to our friends house.  We knocked on the door and when our friend saw us on her porch her face broke into a huge smile. She invited us in and after visiting for just a few minutes my wife and I went on our way. We weren’t there more than maybe ten minutes. But it was so clear that our friend was so very happy with our visit and the plant. It didn’t take much, an inexpensive little gift and a few minutes of time, and we succeeded in bringing Joy to another person. And, I’m sure you know the effect it had on me. It brought me Joy as well.

In his sermon this weekend a friend quoted Pastor Andy Stanley. “Direction, not intention, determines destination” (The Principle of the Path). That was my experience yesterday. When I moved toward Joy, actually did something that was intended to bring Joy – getting outside of myself and doing an act of kindness for another person – I had an experience of Joy.

Please share Heart Matters with your family and friends, and, if you haven't already done so, please "like" our page on facebook.

We use third party advertisements on heartmattersbms.blogspot.com to support our site. Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).

You can chose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.