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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Lead With Kindness

Lead With Kindness

by | 31 Comments

This post is in: 

I cannot tell you how much I needed to stumble on this thread tonight:

Click the top tweet and read the entire thing. It’ll warm you.

There are good people out there. And everyone is going through something. So be kind.

Reader Interactions

31Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    While talking to Tommy, I learned that he’s new to the area as well *and* this is his first Christmas without his daughter, who passed away earlier this year in a car accident.

    that was a punch in the gut

    Be kind, always, for everyone you meet is walking a hard road.

  2. 2.

    James E Powell

    Further support for the argument that we should just let African American women run everything for now, for a while, until we get healed.

  3. 3.

    Mary G

    I’ve been baking since I streamed GBBO and the latest thing I made was a lemon pound cake, which was one of my mother’s favorites. They would occasionally get them at the 99 cents store and she would buy 8 or 10 of them, because they were already stale. Mine was much better and I put it in her cake stand and thought of her.

  4. 4.

    cynthia ackerman

    That’s great medicine!

    Sadly, if I ever meet a Trump again, I’m leading with contempt.

  7. 7.

    Ruckus

    Nice.
    I said in a previous post, life isn’t for sissies. Everyone will go through things in life that can stretch the bounds of “Oh Fuck.” People get sick and die. People get sick and live. People die suddenly without warning. People sometimes suffer far more than is apparent, even to the more than casual viewer. I went and picked up dinner tonight and saw a man walking into the restaurant, with crutches and he had to plan every step, tell his feet what to do and then wait for them to get there. He smiled and said Hi. I have a bit of understanding about that, I have to do that with stairs. I have to do that walking down the street. Otherwise my feet don’t really go where I think they will or know where they actually are. But I’m not any where near he is. Yet. Life can be bad enough with out people making it worse for no reason. I try to paste a smile on my face just for the hell of it, no matter how my day is going. Can’t always manage but damn it’s nice to get a smile back.

  8. 8.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    It was a sweet and gentle reminder that we never know what folks are going through and it is always best to lead with kindness. When we can extend grace, we really should.

    You never really do know what a stranger might be going through. It’s often too easy to not care because you’re too mad. What a heartwarming story. Thanks for sharing TaMara!

  9. 9.

    Steeplejack

    Another feel-good story:

    Our elderly neighbour passed away recently. His daughter popped round a few moments ago clutching a large plastic sack. In the sack were all the Christmas presents he’d bought for *our* daughter for the next thirteen years. ? pic.twitter.com/6CjiZ99Cor

    — Owen Williams ??????? (@OwsWills) December 17, 2018

  11. 11.

    cynthia ackerman

    @NotMax:

    I met Creosote himself a few times socially in the late ’70’s.

    I’m not his type, thankfully.

    In person he was a lot more like his present day narcissist clod than he tends to come across in contemporary footage. Also memorable how the blue bloods scoffed at him. To his face.

  12. 12.

    HumboldtBlue

    I heard a man tell another fella today that yeah, he can get a job, but it’s hard to wake up from the street and go to work.

    Wet clothes. Numb. Where do you get a shower?

    Can’t shit in the bushes.

    They run your name.

    Go ahead, wear a backpack and sit on a bench on the boardwalk.

    You’re homeless.

    Target.

  14. 14.

    Gretchen

    @Mary G: My daughters with celiac disease don’t understand why I am determined to make gluten-free cheese crackers for them. They don’t really want cheese crackers. It’s because my mother used to make lovely cheese crackers during the holidays, and I miss her.

  15. 15.

    Gretchen

    @cynthia ackerman: Awful person that I am, I’m enjoying the idea of the blue bloods scorning him. If they’d let him into their social circles, though, maybe he wouldn’t have had to prove himself by trying to be President.

  16. 16.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Ruckus: Amen to that.

    The last three years have been so over-the-top stressful that losing my mother to pancreatic cancer was one of the less stressful things I went through. But for the most part, other people never knew how pushed to my limits and beyond it’s been for me. Kept swimming, kept swimming.

    Hoping 2019 is going to give me a chance to take a breath.

  17. 17.

    Yutsano

    @Gretchen:

    If they’d let him into their social circles, though, maybe he wouldn’t have had to prove himself by trying to be President.

    No way. He was “New Money”. Beyond that, he was a crass uncouth developer from Queens who talked like it as well. One has to have some kind of decorum and class to get along in that society, and none of the Drumpf clan possessed either the skills nor the grace to interact with the true blue bloods of high New York society. Not even Fred.

  19. 19.

    smike

    @Gretchen:
    There is a serious flaw in our basic founding principles that allows for someone like him to become president. I don’t know what it is, but it could have something to do with fucking white male privilege. And, yes, I am white. We fuck up a lot. Just look around.

  22. 22.

    Bostonian

    @James E Powell: It is really nice to see someone being an adult properly.

    I wish this was the sort of thing leading the news instead of Trumpski’s latest temper tantrum.

  23. 23.

    JGabriel

    Gretchen:

    My daughters with celiac disease don’t understand why I am determined to make gluten-free cheese crackers for them. They don’t really want cheese crackers. It’s because my mother used to make lovely cheese crackers during the holidays, and I miss her.

    Trader Giotto’s Oven-Baked Cheese Bites. No flour or anything else, just cheese.

    I can’t personally recommend them, but only because I’ve never tried them. They get pretty good reviews on line, though, and the label doesn’t indicate anything that would have gluten in the ingredients.

    I know it’s probably not the same as baking crackers for family yourself, but in a pinch, if run out of time or can’t find a good gluten-free cheese cracker recipe, maybe those will do.

    Anyway, I’m mentioning them because I came across and read about them online yesterday. I wasn’t looking for cheese crackers or anything, just came across it while browsing. So, after reading your comment, I figure the only reason I read about Trader Joe’s Cheese Bites yesterday must have been for the serendipity of recommending them to you today.

  27. 27.

    Rugosa

    Recently there was a loud, obnoxious drunk on the subway. He was ranting about a lot of things and proclaiming he was drunk. In the midst of his ranting, he suddenly said “I’m drunk because my son killed himself.” You never know the other person’s pain.

  30. 30.

    annamal

    Every year the NZ blog Public Address holds a vote for word of the year, previous winners have been words like “munted”, “metadata”, the non-gendered insult “[email protected]^ck” and “#dirtypolitics”. This years word of the year winner is kindness

    It was suggested by a woman who helped found the charity good bitches baking (which gets home bakers to supply treats to women’s refuges and other people who need something good in their lives).

    It’s been a rotten year for a lot of people but having this happen cheered me up immensely

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