On a half-term visit to the Victoria and Albert museum with my teenage daughter, I was admiring a statue when another visitor asked me to take a photo.
I accepted the proffered camera phone and took a picture of her and her friend in front of the artwork.
Then we went our separate ways to see more beautiful things.
Two things struck me about this encounter:
How easy it can be to fit small gestures of kindness into your day.
It took me less than 60 seconds to help out, but now they have a photo to remind them of their trip and show their friends when they get home.
A selfie simply wouldn’t have worked, due to the size of the sculpture.
How easy it can be to be friendly and welcoming without much-shared language.
I’m not sure which country the ladies were visiting from, so we used just a few gestures (pointing and holding out the phone), a few words (“sculpture very good”) and lots of smiles. In that short space of time, we connected with each other in the shared experience of enjoying a museum exhibit.
London (and the South East more generally) has a reputation for being unfriendly, but I don’t think that’s always fair.
I regularly spot examples of kindness when I visit ‘the big smoke’, such as someone giving directions in the street or picking up a dropped jumper in the park.
And I think there are very few people who would have said no when asked to take that photo.
Kindness on the move
Maybe it’s because I often travel on public transport myself, but I love all the stories of kindness on buses and trains that are sent to me for my Time for Kindness website. Recent examples include:
A young person helping an older lady to ‘mind the gap’ and step up from the platform into a train carriage.
A local station manager who bought special stickers to give to children under 5 who are too young to get an actual train ticket.
A man on a bus who caught some dropped shopping bags before they actually hit the floor.
Many years ago my husband and I were travelling by train to visit family.
At Birmingham New Street station he helped a fellow passenger to lift her extremely heavy case off the train.
We realised afterwards that the suitcase owner was none other than Camilla Dallerup, then star of Strictly Come Dancing. Perhaps the case was so heavy because it was full of dancing shoes.
Celebrating kindness
World Kindness Day is coming up – it takes place on November 13 each year.
It is a chance to celebrate all the kindness that exists in the world, to recognise what’s happening and inspire even more.
I’ll be attending KindFest, the online festival of kindness, and there are plenty of other ways to celebrate. If you’re going to mark the day in some way, I’d love to hear how you get on.
Sarah Browning is a Kindness Cheerleader, Communicator and Strategist. For more details, log on to: www.timeforkindness.co.uk
