As a new parent, I’ve never been more appreciative of small gestures of kindness. A door opened for the stroller here, someone picking up a fallen pacifier off the ground on the 2,000ndth drop of the day there… it’s enough to make me weep with gratitude. Not only does the help of strangers make me thankful, but somehow each act replenishes my always-near-empty energy supply tenfold – restores my faith in humanity and makes me feel closer to everyone.
That’s quite the dose of hope and energy I receive from relatively minor efforts. Notice I do not say insignificant, because those moments of kindness are anything but in my book. I just wish those who come to my rescue knew how much their attention mattered.
What a different vision of the world we would all have if we actually did measure the impact of helping one another, if we could see the difference our presence makes in the lives of others.
Now we can see what happens when we behave kindly. Love On Revolution is a social experiment determined to record the power of our connections and inspire us all to pay it forward with more acts of kindness.
The way it works is that you do something for someone else. Then you ask them to activate a uniquely coded Love On Wristband. Once switched on, they can share the story of what you did for them online. You can connect as friends or create new followings. Then the process repeats, adding more stories connected to that first act of kindness.
As the website puts things, “For the first time in history, we can map your ripple effect via the inspirational videos, photos, and stories that your act of kindness inspires on into the future…”
Love On Revolution asks participants to pay back a kind turn within three days to keep the experiment building momentum. What’s more, for every wristband or t-shirt purchased from the site’s store, the startup pledges to plant a tree – spreading the joy of taking better care of each other and our planet turn by turn.
What a fascinating undertaking! High time we try to validate the importance of kindness and generosity, to prove the positive results our actions can produce.
We know that helping others makes them feel good and makes us feel good as well (check out this list of Google search results if you’re a skeptic). What we haven’t known, at least not in any organized or large-scale fashion, is what additional kindness each gesture triggers in a sequence of events. No doubt we will all be amazed and inspired.
Start your own love on revolutions and discover the difference each of us makes at loveonrevolution.com.
