As part of our weekly rhythm, each day of the week has a theme and Tuesday is Lovingkindness Day.  It is an opportunity for both the kids and myself to practice gratitude and undertake random (or sometimes not so random!) acts of kindness for friends, loved ones, our community, the planet or a stranger who happens into our path at the right time.  This is not to say that if the opportunity to demonstrate generosity or kindness to another presents itself on another day of the week that we turn our back on that opportunity – of course not! But I have noticed that within our family, it is helpful to set aside a designated day each week where we make a conscious effort to actively look outside of our own needs and wants and search for the opportunity to bring light into another’s life.  We alternate our focus from week to week, with alternating weeks being a time where we focus less on one individual and more on giving back to our local neighbourhood in the form of picking up litter that has collected alongside the footpaths and roadways within our community and disposing of it appropriately.

How Lovingkindess Day Came About

The idea for building Lovingkindness Day into our weekly rhythm came upon me in a number of ways.  I was first introduced to the word Lovingkindness through an amazing book that I read after bringing Baby J home from the hospital: Buddhism for Mothers. This book was an incredible resource for me and I highly recommend it to all mothers, particularly those with young kids and those who are embarking on motherhood for a second, third or fourth (etc) time.  The teachings are wise and helped me really accept that the challenges of motherhood can be confronted with grace and acceptance, and gave me tools for managing my own reactions to the sloppy, tedious or just plain hard bits of family life.  The author, Sarah Napthali, describes lovingkindness as the desire “for all beings to be happy and free from suffering”. She goes on to elaborate that
lovingkindness is the wish for the happiness of not only our family and friends but all the people we know, the people we don’t know, and even the ones we find difficult. This is a challenging concept for most of us, myself included, and perhaps it is only the most enlightened among us who can achieve this lofty goal, but it is a goal worth pursuing nonetheless.

For Master C, I ordered a book entitled Have You Filled a Bucket Today? which teaches children in simple metaphor about how deliberate acts of kindness “fill the bucket” of others, while at the same time having the happy effect of filling our own “bucket” with personal satisfaction, a sense of pride and joy. This book has been great in providing Master C with a vision of what we aim to achieve each Tuesday and it has caused him to be excited and come up with his own ideas for things we can do for others on
Lovingkindness Day.  I am grateful to the visionary author of this book for helping me to teach Master C about the joy in selflessness because, in all honesty, this is a lesson I came to much later in life myself.  Somedays I can get so wrapped up in my own
business that it is easy to forget about the needs of others, who may also be struggling or just need some form of acknowledgement to brighten their day. Although I personally have a long way to go in thinking of others more often and more consistently, having one day a week put aside to consciously do just that is a great form of keeping me (and by extension, my family) more spiritually balanced.  I do want to be conscious of the fact that we are raising future adults, not just raising children, and I love the idea that small acts of kindness can bring about this kind of awareness in our kids so early on.

There is one more additional influence that inspired me to undertake deliberate weekly gestures of lovingkindness and that is my friends.  Locally I have one friend in particular who, despite having her hands very much full with two small children, always amazes me with her efforts of thoughtfulness and generosity.  If there is a new baby born, she will bring food to the mother.  If she has crops aplenty in her garden, she will deliver them to your door.  If you are unwell and she knows it, soup will appear on your doorstep. She does this without seeking recognition or thanks: she is simply that way inclined and she inspires me to be this way as well.  Back home in Canada, I have three friends (who just happen to be IDENTICAL TRIPLETS!) that I have known since I was a teenager, who are so devoted to the concept of lovingkindness that they launched an initiative called Positively Kind, which seeks to empower others to improve their own lives, as well as that of others, through positivity and kindness.  Check them out on their website, or on Facebook here. With people like these in my life, it is so easy to be inspired to do better.

Clean Up Our Neighbourhood

The plan came to me when Master C was only just a baby still, while we walked along our neighbourhood’s streets to and from local parks, cafes and shops.  I noticed with some guilt that as we walked, we were passing by a good amount of rubbish lying along the footpaths and along the roadway.  I acknowledged internally that by walking past this rubbish without picking any up that I was complicit in teaching my son that taking responsibility for the appearance of our community was someone else’s job or, worse, that taking care of our planet didn’t matter.  At that time, I decided that when Master C was old enough, I would register our family to participate each year in Clean Up Australia Day, so that he could learn through direct experience that we can only make a difference by doing something, as Ben Harper would say, with our own two hands.

Once we began this Waldorf journey and looked at establishing our weekly rhythms I
realised that I need not wait for a formal event to teach my son about caring for our
planet, in small ways at first.  So now every fortnight on a Tuesday during our morning walk we arm ourselves with tongs, gloves and a big black garbage bag and get to it.  I’ve had neighbours stare at us like we are nuts, and I’ve had others give us the thumbs up.  I’ve had hoards of kids at the local school out on recess come running to the fence with rubbish they have been inspired to pick up from inside the school grounds, and others still who offer to take our full bag inside to dispose of in the school’s bins, instead of me having to make room for it in our own bin at home. Almost weirdly, Master C LOVES it when he knows we are setting off to clean up our neighbourhood.  That kid can spot a tiny scrap of litter from a mile away, and relishes the experience of doing something that we can see the direct benefit of immediately.  By the time we’re done, which is only about 20 minutes each time, our bag is full and its obvious we have done something to be proud of today.  I think he likes that feeling. 🙂

If you are interested in practicing some acts of lovingkindness yourself, here are some ideas to get you started:

• New neighbour moved in on your street? Bake something and leave it at their doorstep, either anonymously if you’re not the social type, or leave a note welcoming them to the block
• Someone having a baby soon? Bake them lactation cookies; bring them a meal (or two) for the freezer to pull out once baby is here; organise a group cook up with mutual friends and give a portion of each meal to the expectant mother and her family; offer to care for any young children she may already have so she can have a nap or get organised for baby; offer to be the person she can call in the middle of the night should she go into labour and need someone to watch her kids
• Buy a random stranger a cuppa (bonus points if they are a pensioner and clearly on their own)
• Anonymously pay someone else’s dinner bill next time you are out to eat (this happened to me and a few friends when we were in college – and very poor – and I’ll never forget it)
• Send a handwritten note or care package to a loved one out of the blue
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen, women’s shelter or as a companion for single and isolated pensioners
• Find out if there is a Welcome Wagon nearby and get involved in helping asylum seekers to begin their new life (they typically arrive with nothing but the clothes on their back – donate old furniture, bedding, clothes, toys, food and see the impact your generosity can have firsthand)
• Have a huge TV? Consider hosting a Girls Night In (movie night) and donating the funds to charity (it need not necessarily be a Cancer Council event; the structure of the event can be the same with monies collected going to charity of your choice)
• Love to show off your baking skills? How about hosting a Biggest Morning Tea?

If you have ideas of your own for random acts of kindness that we can undertake as part of Lovingkindness Day, please post them below!  Your suggestions would be most welcome.  Thank you, as always, for reading and sharing this journey with our family.

xx

Robyn