One of my creative friends was going through a tough time as a family member was in and out of hospital. When I hear somebody I know is going through a tough time, I have a reflex that I have to do something to make things better. Not to solve the problem because I haven’t got a magic wand in life. I just feel a surprise present, act of kindness or whatever you want to call it, might make a tough day a bit better.
So back to my creative friend, I thought making some granola bars might do the trick. They’re a good source of energy and healthy. I got my friends address and like all acts of kindness I was all set to do a doorstop drop off because some people get awkward in accepting kindness. I was all set…and then I saw on his Instagram that he was on holiday! So I had a batch of granola bars but with nowhere to go. Luckily with anything I bake; family, flatmates, and work colleagues are happy to eat them. 
This isn’t the first time a kindness idea hasn’t gone the way I planned it. A friend of mine last year had her first baby. She had lost her mum when she was a teenager and although she had female relatives around her, I thought it would be great to get some advice on motherhood from some well-known mum’s. I wrote to around 15, and had planned to write to more. But I only got 2 replies; one was from JK Rowling’s people saying she doesn’t reply to individual letters. The other was in a week of writing and was from Jo Elvin, who is the editor of Glamour magazine. She wrote a lovely letter for my friend and really put the time into writing. I didn’t get the outcome I wanted, maybe I just wrote to the wrong people.
And when I did a random act of kindness day I tried to give a dog a bone! It’s seriously hard to do. The owners are close by and would get suspicious of a stranger giving their dog a bone. In the end I just had to leave it in a park and hope a dog would find it!
In the news you hear lots about random acts of kindness and the successes, but you hear less about the ones where the intentions are good, but don’t pay off. They should be rewarded just as much because at the end of the day, doing something for a stranger is a risk, you don’t know how they’ll react whether it will be good or bad.
If an act of kindness doesn’t pan out, don’t be put off. It’s all about timing and sometimes even acts of kindness, however great they are can have a case of the right place wrong time. And if you’ve experienced that in an act of kindness you’ve done, I urge you to keep going, and I applaud your efforts.
Now does anybody want some granola??
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