14 Less Traditional Ways To Give Love On Valentine’s Day …or Any Day

Love Cookies

Choose one …or a bunch!

  1. Deliver candy, balloons, or cards to a local disability day care facility.
  2. Give food to a local food pantry — call first to find out what their pressing needs are.
  3. Go to a busy building that doesn’t have automatic doors and be the doorman/woman for 30 minutes. Smile at everyone and wish each a good day. If anyone asks why you’re doing what you’re doing, tell them, with a big smile, because it’s Valentine’s Day.
  4. Deliver one or two dozen heart shaped cookies to an elderly couple or individual living in your neighborhood. Make sure you introduce yourself and get their names if you haven’t already. Also, make sure you leave a couple of really big smiles, and a compliment or two.
  5. Spend 30 minutes visiting someone in a nursing home facility who doesn’t receive regular visitors. Ask the staff, they’ll let you know whom to visit. Don’t go at dinner/supper time.
  6. Create or buy six Valentine cards and deliver them to a local nursing home. Write some fun, funny, or sentimental things inside. Leave them unsealed and unaddressed. Take them to the administration office or nurse station and ask if they would select six individuals and deliver them. They can add the person’s name and seal the envelope. (they’ll need to look inside envelopes from strangers — even nice strangers)
  7. Deliver one or two dozen heart shaped cookies to the staff at a local DMV or post office. (or, make four dozen and combine numbers 4 and 7)
  8. Tell someone that you love them — someone that you love very much, but you haven’t actually told them in quite some time.
  9. Volunteer at a free meal site for a couple of hours. Usually, they can always use additional help.
  10. Donate some of your valued and useful clothes to a local clothing distribution center that serves struggling individuals and families. Current season clothing is always best.
  11. Smile and say hello to every person you make eye contact with for the entire day. Hold the eye contact for at least three seconds.
  12. Help two people who appear to be struggling to accomplish a task (sweep, shovel, load a vehicle, etc., if you looking for the opportunity to help, you’ll find it).
  13. Refrain from saying ANYTHING negative about ANY individual for the entire day — including YOURSELF.
  14. Call an elderly relative or individual who has had a positive impact in your earlier life. Choose someone you haven’t talked with for some time, let them know that you were thinking of them, and are grateful for the influence they had in your life.

Note: If you partake in one or more of these love-filled gifts, they’ll be one additional love recipient …you!

Happy Valentine’s Day to all.

A Truly Random “Random Act Of Kindness”

Three cheers for Bryant Collins!

Bryant_Collins

Enjoy.

credit: USA Today

Being Alone Is Tough

Need_To_Be_Connected

Connect and Enjoy!

Being alone is tough, on the outside and the inside. We need to be connected with people, whether we like it or not. A painless way to connect is to reach out, to help, to volunteer, to give.  —Paul Mark Sutherland

.

 original graphic credit: unknown

The Paradox

Thanks to Shervin Hojat and OM Times for these words of wisdom.

Enjoy!

 

We’re ‘Sweeter’ When We SMILE!

A Smile is a cheer, to you and to me;
The cost is nothing, it’s given free.

It comforts the weary, and gladdens the sad;
Consoles those in trouble, good or bad

To rich and to poor, beggar or thief
it’s free to all, of any belief.

A natural gesture of young and of old;
cheers on the faint, and disarms the bold.

Unlike most blessings for which we pray;
It’s one thing we keep, when we give it away!

—Original Author Unknown

original photo credit goes to: basketman

Sometime …Somewhere

You gave on the way a pleasant smile,
and thought no more about it.
It cheered a life that had been dark the while,
which might have been wrecked without it.
And so for that smile that was given there,
you’ll have a reward sometime …somewhere.

You spoke one day a cheering word,
and passed to other duties.
It cheered a heart; new promise stirred,
and painted a life with beauties.
And so for that word of golden cheer,
you’ll have a reward sometime …somewhere.

You lent a hand to a fallen one,
a lift in love was given.
You saved a soul when hope was gone,
and helped him on toward heaven.
And so for that help you proffered there,
you’ll have a reward sometime …somewhere.

—Author Unknown

My prayer today is that I will at ‘sometime’ arrive at ‘somewhere’ and that it will be really, really crowded, and that I will see you there as well!

How To Be…

The Paradoxical Commandments
by Dr. Kent M. Keith

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
    Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
    Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
    Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
    Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
    Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
    Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
    Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
    Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
    Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
    Give the world the best you have anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001