A Semi Start to Acts of Kindness

Because this last week has been a dusty mess of moving, and we are now in separate states, there has been limited time for us to complete challenges. However, there has been plenty of time to CONTEMPLATE the completion of challenges, and that is what we have done.

One such contemplation involves our challenge to perform 20 anonymous acts of kindness. Of our seven current challenges, this challenge is perhaps the most ambiguous.

Some ambiguity that we have contemplated:

1. Can an act of kindness be too small to count as an act of kindness?
2. Does it really count as an act of kindness if it is something you do habitually?
3. What qualifies an Act of Kindness to be counted as one of Dorian and Amanda’s 20, and does this differ from the objective qualification of an Act of Kindness?

The ambiguity unambiguized:

1. Of course, no act of kindness is ever too small to count as an act of kindness, generally. However, some acts ARE too small for the purpose of this challenge–e.g. avoiding the squashing of a single ant…which, no, is too small NOT because the ant is small, but because of the minimal amount of effort involved. Effort is hard to quantify. But we will require our 20 acts to all demand some intuitively determined minimum amount of effort.
2. Similarly, habits count as acts of kindness, objectively (if they are kind, active habits). If you drop your change into the Ronald McDonald House box every time you buy some McNuggets, that is, of course, an act of kindness. However, doing something habitual is not really challenging. And this is a site about challenges. So we’re requiring that all of our 20 acts be things we don’t normally do. (We don’t habitually drop our change in the Ronald McDonald box, so this would count).
3. It turns out the objective definition of an act of kindness DOES differ from that which Dorian and Amanda will use to choose their 20.  (Would we have written the post if it didn’t?)

 

You may be thinking—all of this contemplation doesn’t count as an act of kindness! And you would be right. We’ll get to acting soon.

Also in the next few days, we’ll be posting some contact with prison inmates and some iambic pentameter warm-up exercises. And the twins, who requested a delay to the start date due to their graduation (Congratulations!!) will actually begin the scavenger hunt.