“… it’s in your power
to increase other people’s joy … through random acts of kindness.”
Stephanie Dowrick has been Shearer’s Bookshop’s first author
event for each of the last three years. As the New Year ticks over, we are more
reflective, have more aspirations and are more inspired – qualities that are
enriched and encouraged by Stephanie’s writing and her words. As expected, the
evening held to discuss her new book, Everyday
Kindness, was full of insights that were delivered with Stephanie’s innate warmth,
openness and generosity.
Everyday Kindness
explores the nature of kindness and the role it can play in creating happiness
within your life and the lives of others. Stephanie explained that there has
been a consistent theme vividly emerging in her work over the last seven years
which is how the quality of your connections with other people, arising from
the way you see yourself, determines your happiness. For her, and I’m sure many
other, it is a timely theme - often we don’t know quite what we’re hungry for
until we receive it.
As with all Stephanie’s books, Everyday Kindness does not preach or instruct. Stephanie wants to
avoid giving the public advice and instead sees her writing balancing on a
precipice between sharing wealth, knowledge and her vast life experience (a
life that includes 30 years of writing, being a minister, retreat leader and
psycho analyst). This unique approach is expressed in Stephanie’s choice to use
narrative to share her ideas. By bringing to life the substantial ideas of
kindness, the reader can more readily envision a how to reach a kinder life.
Through story and reflection she hopes to waken up a depth of possibility that
our everyday encounters don’t quite match and don’t quite meet.
The encouragement that Stephanie’s books give the reader are
necessary to evaluate and possibly change habits of thinking that get in the
way of our goals. After all, Stephanie explains, kindness is both a concept and
a value that only comes to life when it is activated by us. Such activation
requires us to recognise that we can choose the paths our life follows and that
these choices are highly relevant to our relationships and who we become.
We all know we must make significant choices in our life,
but it is less easy to know how to we cultivate the confidence to make choices
that in turn cultivate happiness and others. It seems simple, but often we need
the courage to do what is going well and to do more of it; and similarly, to
make choices about things that haven’t been going well in the past and unlikely
to get better in the future.
Stephanie pointed out that we all share a condition – human
life. From that, we can try to understand each other and learn to show our
appreciation for one another more overtly. Stephanie believes that much of the
sorrow over the agonies of loss of self and loss of self confidence stems from
the need for appreciation and the inability to appreciate the gift of one’s own
life. When we express happiness we lift our spirit and the spirits of others.
Appreciation through kindness is the most valuable form of currency. Stephanie
ended the evening with a reminder that kindness is strength, not weakness – it
takes absolutely no strength at all to be nasty.
Written by Natalie
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