RAK Day

By failing to read an email that came in the other day in time, I managed to miss knowing that the 1st of September was Random Acts of Kindness Day. Admittedly it's becoming increasingly hard to keep up with all the 'Days' that we're supposed to celebrate in a year - I think some group or other has every day covered, and some days are covered several times over.

However, I do support the idea of RAK Day. It acknowledges that we're all in this together; the people around us aren't extras in our personal biopic movie; that however much we may think someone else's life stinks (and ours, by contrast, is virtually perfect) that doesn't make them less a human being, or any less a child of God. Honouring someone with a random act of kindness is good for everyone's soul.

The email I got from the Love Your Neighbour organisation suggests three ideas for starters:

• Pay for a strangers' coffee
• Bake a cake for your neighbour
• Make this the day you play cricket with your kids in the backyard

The last one doesn't really seem like an RAK to me...it's something you should be doing with your kids anyway (although cricket in the backyard at this time of the year is a bit of a non-starter due to the soggy nature of the grass). But paying for someone's coffee might be fun - and might even start up a conversation that helps you see that other person as real, instead of - 'fictional.'

I have this great tendency to invent lives for people I see on the bus or in the street - they'd probably be horrified if they knew what I've made up for them, and it's likely I'm wrong in 99.99% of the cases anyway. I think I'm a great reader of people, but it's possible I'm not!

Baking a cake for your neighbour gives you an opportunity to find out what their door chime actually sounds like as well - so you get to have a bit of additional fun in the process. They get to have fun imagining what that cake actually tastes like before they try it - which might not be so hot if I've baked it.

RAK Day doesn't have to be limited to the 1st of September. You can celebrate this day every day - in fact, you/we/I probably should!

Culture shock

It’s been interesting to return to London 40 years after I first arrived there. At that time I suffered a major cultural shock: people all around me had a confidence I didn’t know; the place was full of the sexual revolution of the sixties, with blatant advertising of what was essentially porn at every turn; advertising itself was a constant in your face; the huge number of people was overwhelming, and the pace of everything was extreme.
Coming back I don’t find things anywhere near as different. The whole Western world is much more on a par, in particular on a technological level, so that England isn’t really further ahead of NZ anymore. Advertising is similar around the world, the tv is the same everywhere, even down to the same faces (tv was in its infancy in NZ when I first came to the UK), and the sexual revolution has left the whole world in much the same mess. As for all the people, well, the sheer number of people is still something I doubt I’ll ever get used to, but it’s different from the first time I experienced it. I was expecting it, for one thing, but I’ve also been in some other places where endless people is the norm.
What’s different about London? More bridges, especially new foot-bridges over the Thames; a cleaner atmosphere (I came at the end of the pollution era); far more people of different nationalities; taxis with advertising all over them, more boats of all sorts on the river, and a number of changes to the skyline. But in essence, London doesn’t seem to have changed much: the tubes still run constantly and for the most part efficiently. Piccadilly Circus station is still the same round building I knew and waited in – often for hours while people came late for appointments. (I sometimes used to go round and round the place wondering if I’d missed someone.) The buses are as ubiquitous as before. And the people are the same mix of really friendly, and strangely distant. It’s nice to be back here, but I’m glad to be able to have far more contact with those back home than I did on the previous visit.

The older I get...

It’s Monday here in NZ, so I guess that’s a time to give the Link and Blog Challenge of MeMe Monday a go.
But can I talk about myself? Any more?

My previous fiancee (many moons ago) broke off our engagement because she claimed I ate apples too noisily. I still eat apples in the same way, as far as I can tell, and I’m still married to my wife after 33 years.
I’m talented, but not excessively so: I’m not a great writer; I’m a pretty good one. I’m not a great pianist; I’m a pretty good one. I have a great eye for art, but not the patience to learn how to create it.
The older I get the more I think: there are umpteen thousand books I’ll never read, and umpteen thousands pieces of music I’ll never hear, and umpteen thousand works of art I’ll never see. More important than any of these: there are umpteen million people I’ll never know.
And apropos of that last one: as I get older I find it harder to make friends. When I was young friendship just happened. Now it’s a real effort. You’d think it would be like riding a bike: once learned, never forgotten. But it’s not.