David R. Hamilton, Ph.D. – I’ve written quite a lot about kindness over the years in my books and blogs. When we think of being kind, it’s usually in the context of things we can do for others.
It can be quite straightforward. We either respond to a person’s needs or we do something kind just as a treat.
But what do you do when someone is being unkind to you?
Do you still be kind? Do you make a commitment that kindness is your way and let it go? Or do you tell them where to go? Continue reading
Paul Rosenberg – Everything we do changes the world, of course, and I remain a strong advocate for kindness. Nonetheless, we need to face the fact that the children’s book version of “be kind and change the world” hasn’t worked. Wars and crime proceed as they have since the Bronze Age, and long years of promoting “be kind” hasn’t changed it a bit.
And so we need to find out why kindness hasn’t worked beyond the personal and family level. If we don’t, our efforts to cultivate it will be empty dogmas that have no effect in the real world: Our preaching on kindness won’t go much farther than making children behave. Continue reading
Henry Seltzer – April has a lot going on, including some entirely unique and astrologically interesting features. These include the recent entry of Pluto into Aquarius in the timing of the previous month’s Equinox New Moon, still affecting the current month, an unusual second Aries New Moon on the 19th of this month that is also a Solar Eclipse, as well as the eclipse taking place in the last ten minutes of a degree of Aries and the fact that this mid-April event lies in close square to Pluto.
Add to the above the general tenor of an entirely transformative presence of Pluto in the first degree of Aquarius in aspect to the recent New Moon, to Saturn at that aspect’s midpoint, and to potentially angry Mars in the final degrees of Gemini. These are some confrontational times and some uncharted territory that we are entering upon in April and in the spring and summer to follow. Continue reading
Amy Furr – Community members are blessing a mother who walks over an hour to her job every morning in Spring Lake, Michigan.
One man who heard her story made a donation that overwhelmed the woman, whose name is Samantha Turcotte, WZZM reported Wednesday.
She previously told the outlet she had been walking an hour and a half to work each day after she was in a car accident in February that was not her fault.
It left her without a car, but Turcotte was not about to let that keep her from getting to work for her 5:00 a.m. shifts. Continue reading
David R. Hamilton Ph.D. – It’s quite a well-known saying in the village I grew up in, in the Forth Valley of central Scotland. I’ve heard my Mum say it a few times.
I think most of us have had the experience that kindness feels good. Some people get a nice, warm feeling in their chest when they help someone. But kindness does more than this. It has an actual physical impact on the heart.
There are studies that compare soft attitudes and behaviors, like empathy, kindness, compassion, gentleness, against harder attitudes like hostility and aggression. These studies find that softer behaviors help maintain a healthy heart. Hostility and aggression, on the other hand, are associated with cardiovascular disease. Continue reading