The Kindness Exchange – GUEST BLOG

Team Kindness Blog is very proud and honoured to share the first guest post on Kindness Blog. Our guest today, Josh Urban, is an inspirational, Kindness-loving, rock musician from the Washington, DC area. He wants to share his wonderful plan to spread much-needed loving-kindness during the forthcoming holiday season. As such, we would very much appreciate if our wonderful readers can help us to spread this lovely idea far and wide.

So, without any further ado, we hand over to Josh…

The Kindness Exchange

The holidays aren’t always jolly and bright.  For those struggling with sickness, grief, sadness, poverty, or bad memories,  the darkness seems to follow the long nights, creeping in and knocking at the door like a bitter north wind.  Yet in this dead of winter, one of the most beautiful threads connecting the faiths that celebrate a holiday in December is the symbol of light in the darkness.  

My name is Josh Urban.  I’m a rock musician from the Washington, DC area, and I’d like to invite you to join me in a worldwide social project to spread some light, hope, and kindness this season.  

 

The idea is simple:  Go do something kind for someone, friend or stranger (or better yet, enemy.)  Post about it on social media using the hashtag #KindnessExchange.

I’ll be collecting such tagged posts, printing them out, and putting them on a lit holiday tree in my front yard – a literal beacon in the darkness.  

 

A post might look like so:  “Just bought a homeless man a cup of soup and ate with him – as long as I can eat, so can strangers. #KindnessExchange“

For my part, I’ll be playing music in hospitals, VA centers, street corners, and anywhere else that might need it…and buying people soup, of course!  

 

My hope is that we’ll not only brighten the days of strangers and friends, but also our holidays as well.  I call it The Clarence Effect, from the classic Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life.  The hero is going to commit suicide on Christmas eve, thinking he’s “worth more dead than alive.”  Before he can plunge into the icy waters, he sees a man drowning.  He jumps in to save the man, who turns out to be his guardian angel.  “What were you doing in the river?”  “Saving you!” comes the reply.

 

Perhaps the best way to save ourselves is to save others. 

 

So, I especially encourage you to join in this effort if you’re feeling a bit glum around the season.  

 

Let’s light up the night, and inspire each other to greater and greater acts of kindness.  It seems to me that the world is a blank canvas on which we can paint our vision of how we’d like it to be.  Let’s paint some light in the darkness this season.  

 

Remember – post those actions back with the tag #KindnessExchange, and see the magic unfold back at the hub of the project:  JoshUrban.com/Kindness

Thank you, Josh