Director Of Kindness

​"EQUAL AND OPPOSITE REACTIONS" AND "HAIL MARY" ARE AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.

HTTP://AMZN.TO/2XVCGRA
​
HTTPS://WWW.AMZN.COM/1684334888

​DIRECTOR OF KINDNESS

     Last Friday was World Kindness Day.

      I'd never heard of this holiday before, but apparently it was conceived in Tokyo and established in 1998, from which time it  has been celebrated every year on November 13. And though the United States is putatively among the 28 countries that observe World Kindness Day, the day is obviously not celebrated very robustly here.
      Would be nice if it was, though. Would've been especially nice this sad, frightening, contentious year to have a day which we all spent being kind to each other.

​    But fat chance of our country celebrating World Kindness Day this year of all years, thanks in no small part to the gospel preached by our President who, praise him if you want for whatever merit you find in him, is unquestionably among the hardest and most unkind people on the planet. One would hardly expect a shout-out to World Kindness Day from the likes of Donald Trump. Which is too bad because, when we're not caught up in our politics or ideologies, Americans are for the most part kind people.

     Still, it's nice to know that such a day as World Kindness Day exists on the global calendar, even if we in the United States haven't yet gotten around to celebrating it very much. There's always next year, though, and all the years to follow from then on. In fact starting next year we'll have a new President who is certainly many clicks higher on the kindness scale - as is almost everybody else in the world - than the current occupant of the White House, and so will at least be a better example to the country.
      However, if the U.S. as a whole is at the moment behind the World Kindness Day curve, I learned 
on the same day I learned about World Kindness Day that Columbus, Ohio is ahead on the national kindness-as-a-movement curve. 
       It so happens, I learned, that our city has a Director of Kindness. Not, that is to say, as a member of the municipal administration, but rather as part of the staff of the Columbus Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic organization whose stated mission is "strengthening and improving our community for the benefit of all its residents." 
      A couple of years ago the Columbus Foundation started an initiative called Kind Columbus, the purpose of which is to cultivate and facilitate acts of kindness in our city.

     This past summer Kind Columbus created a new position, that of Director, whose job is dedicated to "spreading the words and actions of kindness as a defining value for our region."
        This position was filled by Dr. Amy Acton,

...who was the Ohio Health Director who valiantly led the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak in our state,

...until the gentle doctor was harassed out of office, not by the by demonstrators who protested Health Department mandates by congregating daily in front of her house, shouting threats at Dr. Acton, who is Jewish, and her family,

...but by the right-wing members of the Republican-leaning Ohio State Legislature who began introducing Senate bills to strip the Health Director of her power to administrate public health policy and reassign that authority to themselves.
    In her soft-spoken, sincere voice Dr. Acton always preached mask-wearing, social distancing and sheltering in place as acts of kindness that we do for each other to keep each other safe. In fact she regularly wove the message of the need for us to care for ourselves and each other into her daily COVID-19 update briefings with the Governor.

​  But in the end Dr. Acton was no match for the forces of ignorance and unkindness that have been not only a terrible symptom of the COVID epidemic nationwide, but continue to feed it's rampant virulence.
        However Amy Acton has repaid the unkindness she received with the kindness she now promotes in her job as the Director of Kind Columbus. And in honor of World Kindness Day she shared a beautiful, soothing message on the importance of all of us helping each other get through these hard, dark days by shining the light of kindness on one another.

        Here's the link to Dr. Amy Acton's "Message on World Kindness Day": 
                                       ​https://youtu.be/k0kN0im3na8   
         Do watch it. It will do your heart good. 

References:
https://inspirekindness.com/world-kindness-day

​https://www.awarenessdays.com/awareness-days-calendar/world-kindness-day-2020/
​​ 
https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/made-us-smile/watch-dr-amy-acton-has-simple-encouraging-message-for-ohioans-on-world-kindess-day

https://columbusfoundation.org/about-us/overview