Happy Random Acts of Kindness Week!!

Hi Folks:

This is Day 3 of Random Acts of Kindness Week! Monday, being Family Day, of course we went out hugging. As mentioned in a previous post, 2020 marks our 11th calendar year of hugging locals and tourists alike – our 11th year begins officially on June 9, 2020 😉

In 11 years we’ve shared hugs with people from (at least ) 88 countries, and we’re off to a great start so far this year. Being mid-February, we’ve already shared hugs with people from 16 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czechia, England, France, India, Iran, Ireland, Mexico, Slovakia, Turkey, U.S. and Venezuela. Yesterday we had the opportunity to meet someone from Panama, but she wasn’t much into hugging. That’s okay. We also accept smiles, waves, handshakes, fist bumps, bicycle bells, car (and truck and bus) honks… Any moment of connection, really. By the way, we’ve only ever hugged one person from Panama since we started keeping track in 2014, so if you happen to be wandering by… Just sayin’ is all. 🙂

Monday Marcia was able to share a hug with a police officer, we shared two pull over and jump out hugs from a van passing by, and we met a plethora of other wonderful people. We also shared our longest hug(s) ever. As we’ve mentioned before, we offer but people have to come to us. We let the other person determine the parameters of the hug; we’re there to offer whatever they need in the moment. Some people are quick embrace types, others are back slappers, and some are really deep huggers. Every hug is unique and special. There are those who feel that a good hug should last at least 15-20 seconds, and we have all the time in the world for them. Yesterday we had one young visitor who needed a little more. Not seconds, minutes. Maybe five? No one was holding up a stopwatch, and it really doesn’t matter, but it was far and above the longest hug we’ve ever had from someone.

During every one of our hugging sessions we have one last hug for the road before we pack up, and in every session we have what we’ve come to call the hug of the day. They’re always unique and while we appreciate sharing contact, loving energy and stories with everyone who stops, there’s always one where we agree that this person was our reason for being there that day. It’s ephemeral, but we both feel it. It’s palpable. Yesterday, well, yesterday we had three. That’s never happened to us before, but we’re glad we were out there.

As mentioned at the top, this is Random Acts of Kindness Week. The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation has some simple ideas everyone can use, every day to be kind to those around them. You can find them here: RAK Week. As the saying goes, “In a world where you can be anything, be kind.” ~ U/K

Okay, that’s it for now. Remember to hug someone you love today. Or a stranger. Or, preferably, both!!

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. We came across this story the other day. It’s from the Ripple Kindness Project. We can’t think of a better story to celebrate RAKWeek: Our plans of helping a family went to hell

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.