Kindness

Here’s a heartwarming story. Over in the United States, a homeless man called Billy Ray Harris has earned himself adulation and one hell of a payday after returning a woman’s lost engagement ring.

Sarah Darling accidentally dropped her rather pricey ring into Harris’ coin cup with some spare change. Billy presumably could have sold it for a few thousand hot meals, but when an understandably panicked Darling tracked him down the next day, he happily returned it.

Now Darling’s fiancee has set up a website seeking donations for Billy, and the money is pouring in. It just goes to show that sometimes kindness does pay. Big time. So, would you have returned Sarah’s engagement ring? Be honest now. We’re not such a judgmental bunch here.

Continue reading "Punch on: Open Thread 27/02/2013" »

The tinsel’s growing dusty, and our New Year’s Eve hangover is finally receding. So now it’s time to face up to 2013. Forget about New Year’s Resolutions they’re soo 2012.

There’s another way to feel good this year, and it doesn’t involve going on a diet or cutting back on the booze. It’s called paying it forward.

It involves doing a random act of kindness for someone else, for no other reason but to put a smile on their dial. It means baking a cake for a neighbour, picking up another person’s bill in a restaurant or leaving lotto tickets on a stranger’s car windscreen. The idea is that you repay the kindness of others by doing something for someone else you pay the kindness forward.

Continue reading "A resolution for all of us" »