The Power of a Few Kind Words

Over the years I've learnt not to underestimate the power of simple. How a smile (from a stranger or a friend) can lift my spirits. How kindness, even when I've been at the lowest of places, has transformed the experience. How a hug can change the mood.

My recent musings are over joy, kindness and the benefit of being a beginner... being a beginner at something is a feeling I really like. I love to dive in and enjoy new or different experiences, and recognise it's good for my brain to explore different areas.

I am relatively competent at 'soft' crafts - crochet, sewing (hand or machine) and knitting but working with wood is a whole different place for me, the idea of it challenges me. My partner had been planning to make a woodshed, but we'd bought one and walking past a pile of wood daily got me thinking...

So I looked for simple designs, found one I liked and thought was achievable and enlisted the help of my dad. I'm grateful for ever supportive parents, through the bad times, good and the oh how about trying this times.

Anyway, this isn't even really about the bench, more that I'd loaded the wood into the car boot and a friend's teenage son was walking past with their dog. We had a short chat and I told him I needed luck wishing to me as I was off to make my first bench.

Kindly he told me 'you've got this', before he continued on his walk.

Small words, maybe even said politely as an automatic response, but to the receiver (that would be me that morning) they meant a lot.

The bench making Sunday was a hot day and due to shoulder tension, I had an encroaching migraine, but was determined. I wanted to make my bench.  My first wooden piece since CDT days in school in fact. Maybe on an easier day I'd have continued on without taking account or real notice of the kind words, but they really stuck with me. Banging nails in with a banging headache wasn't the most pleasant, and perhaps there was a good argument for stopping... but I wanted to complete it, and those words were a big factor in carrying me through.

Now when I see the bench, sit on it, walk past it, I'm reminded of the power of a few simple words of kindness, and I'm on a mission to share it. Each time I leave the house I try to do at least one kind thing for someone I engage with on that trip. Often my trips out may just be a school run, so that may mean letting a car out, waving someone across the road or similar. Small acts, but I know when someone does them for me they have a positive impact on my day.

Like Spike Millegan's Smile (though til googling it I thought it was called Smiling is Contagious) poem, I think there could easily be an epidemic of kindness. It might only take a few simple words.

PS. Here's my bench :)

PPS The bench has so much more kindness in it than even just above, from the wood that was gifted to us by a friend who'd demolished some outbuildings, my partner who'd brought it home, his friend who drove him back with it in his van, my dad who was prepared to hand-saw it to help me make it, his neighbour who lent us a circular saw to cut the wood... it's a real gift to have it and have made it.