![\"A](\"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/5b3db42b1be59e3dce1a5f945684e641.jpg\")
<\/a>A quote by perhaps my all-time favorite author, Kahlil Gibran.<\/p><\/div>\n
I\u00a0occasionally\u00a0write<\/em> about kindness, but I actually think<\/em> about it\u00a0most\u00a0days. And I was recently graciously thanked by a couple of readers for my\u00a0previous<\/em>\u00a0article on kindness. But that one was published two and half years ago, so the new<\/em> kudos on it gave me the impetus to do this<\/em> column, as well. (If you missed it back then, I hope that you\u2019ll do me<\/em> the kindness of reading it now, because it\u2019s so much more in-depth about what kindness means to me than this one is, and includes laudings of most of the kindest people I know. Here\u2019s that link: itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/karens-rants-kindness-should-be-normal<\/a>.)<\/p>\n All of those thoughts from 2018 still stand today. Those will never change. But let me add a couple of more here. Nothing is more important to me in a person than kindness.<\/p>\n And it appears that I\u2019m not alone. I\u2019ve noticed the reference to the trait in several TV shows in just this week alone. On The Good Doctor <\/em>and The Undoing<\/em>, someone being kind was mentioned a few times…in a row! On both shows!<\/p>\n Words to live by.<\/p><\/div>\n I have one little (yet big) example of kindness that I did not<\/em> write in that other column on the subject. I did<\/em> do a short video of the story, which accompanied that written piece, but I feel that I should have put it in writing, as well, so I\u2019m going to correct that wrong right now. (If you\u2019d rather hear<\/em> that brief anecdote, rather than just read<\/em> it, here\u2019s the link to my YouTube video of it: www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mon4s6dE7TU&t=9s<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Here\u2019s my tale: First of all, this happened two decades ago, so how wonderful is the story that it still sticks out in my mind today, and I know it word for word?! So I used to meet my Brooklyn parents in Aspen in the summers, and then my father died, and my mother was so brave to go by herself. She flew by herself for the first time in her life, rented a car when she got off the plane, and she drove to an entirely new place to stay because their former<\/em> lodgings were being re-purposed. So I, of course, met her at this new place a few weeks later, and discovered a trio of incredible girls there who became three of my favorite friends for life: Gina from South Africa and Alex and Simone from Austria. The four of us became inseparable over the next few summers. I always flew home before my mother, which meant that my senior citizen little mo had to say goodbye to everyone and get in her car and drive herself to the airport to leave town. I hated that sooo much! So I called my mother when she was leaving, and I asked couldn\u2019t someone just drive her to the airport? And she said, \u201cOf course not; I\u2019m not a baby!\u201d And she told me that the three girls had more<\/em> than offered to drive her, which was so kind of them. So I called Alex to thank her and the others for being so nice to my mother. Alex asked, \u201cWhat did we do that was so nice?\u201d So I pointed-out that they offered to take time out of their busy schedules to drive her to the airport. And without skipping a beat, Alex replied in her adorable Austrian accent, \u201cKaren, that is not nice<\/em>. That is nor-mal<\/em>!\u201d I cry every time I think of that.<\/p>\n<\/a>