#10 CC manual speech " ROAK" by Jessica Kelly

RAOK
How would you feel if you woke up one morning and someone had shoveled off your drive way? How would you feel if someone put money in your parking meter if your time was going to expire? How would you feel if you showed up for work one day and your boss announced everyone could take a day off with pay just because? Pretty good I bet? Well I have one more questions for you; how would you feel if you bought a coworker coffee one day out of the blue and then found out you made their day? I bet that would make you feel pretty good too.
Good evening madame chair, fellow TM..
The dhali lama once said;
All of us are born for a reason, but all of us don't discover why. Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others.
In other words; success is not necessarily measured by material things you have for yourself or the accolades you have for yourself, it’s the kind things you do for other people. There is actually a name for this phenomonom of doing kind things for people that’s been popping up more and more recently. A “new kind of movement”; thats been around for a few years now called RAOK or “random acts of kindness”.
RAOK is defined by Wikipedia as any selfless act performed by a person or persons wishing to either assist or cheer up an individual. There will generally be no reason other than to make people smile, or be happier.
But why would anyone want to just randomly do kind things for people? What benefit would it offer you?



For one, performing a random act of kindness can actually improve your self-esteem. Think about it- To have in you the power to improve someone elses mood or situation is empowering and can make you feel better about yourself. Random acts of kindness are essential to our wellbeing. They free us from self-obsession, selfishness and isolation. That may be one reason why so many people volunteer. It just feels good. We feel better about ourselves when we help others or when we better the lives of others. Another benefit often quoted by self-help guru’s and philosophers is that we can only be as happy as those around us. So by that theory; when we perform actions that improve the happiness or situations in those around us, we in turn improve our own happiness.
What are some examples of random acts of kindness? One famous example quoted widely on the internet happened to a popular internet blogger, Arthur Rosenfield. He was in the drive-thru line at Starbucks. The man in line behind him was getting impatient and angry, leaning on his horn and shouting insults at both Arthur and the Starbucks workers. Beginning to get angry himself, Arthur chose to keep his cool and change the negativity into something positive. He paid for the man’s coffee and drove away. When he got home at the end of the day, he discovered that he had created a chain of giving that had not only continued all that day but had been highlighted on NBC News and within twenty-four hours had spread around the world on the Internet.
Random acts of kindness have been portrayed in the movies as well;
The movie “pay it forward” starring Kevin spacey, Helen hunt and haley joel osmend is a prime example of the impact a random act of kindness can have. The movie portrays a social studies teacher who gives his students an assignment to perform random acts of kindness towards others, and then ask them to “pay it forward”, meaning they are to perform another random act of kindness for someone else, rather than pay back the person who was kind to them.


The movie follows a young boy who has chosen 3 people to perform his random act of kindness on, he encourages each of those people to then “pay it forward” by doing something kind for someone else. A pyramid of kind acts then follows, and I won’t give away the end of the movie, but 100’s or peoples lives are effected and bettered, and it all is traced back to the one little boy who started the chain of event, with his random act of kindness.
In essence, it’s saying that one small act paid forward can snowball into many and much larger kind acts.
Another famous real life example of a much larger scale random act of kindness happened in 2004 on the oprah winfrey show. Oprah had filled her audience of people who were in some way shape or form in need of a new car. These people were unaware that everyone in the audience were in the same boat as them. Oprah then opened her show by announcing that there was a parking lot full of brandnew cars out back. One for each of the 276 audience members. Newsclips of the extatic people, jumping up and down, hugging each other, crying tears of joy, were shown nation wide. The image was inspiring. Oprah now holds a show once a year called “oprah’s favorite things” where she showers her audience with her 1000’s of dollars of free stuff. News of her act made headlines around the world and prompted other well-off talk show hosts, newscasters and radio hosts to perform similar acts.
On a slightly smaller scale, on nov. 13, 2009, the KW record published a large add declaring it.. RAOK day and included cut out coupons, encouraging people to perform random acts of kindness. The theory was that when you commited an act of kindness, you handed the coupon to another person, who was then to perform a random act of kindness for someone else, and pass the card along.



My younger sister and her friends had a great idea that day. As high school students, natalie and her friends decided they would do larger scale random act of kindness, but they soon realized they were all very short of money, so they made giant signs reading “free hugs” and they marched downtown kitchener and took up a spot on the sidewalk where they advertised their services to passerby’s. the pictures from that day speak for themselves. In each and every picture the hugger and the huggee both have the biggest and brightest smiles on their faces and I’m sure they brightened more than a few days with their hugs… .but you could tell that they themselves got just as much out of doing kind things than the people they were doing them for.
So what can you do for RAOK? Maybe you don’t have the money to buy someone a new car, or the patience to sit around hugging random passerby’s, but each of us has something we can offer;
If your money is low but you have time to give, something as simple as saying “hi” to someone on the street is a random act of kindness. Some more examples are;
Offer to carry groceries for an elderly person
Hold the door open whenever possible for someone walking behind you,
Bake cookies for your workplace.
Shovel someone elses driveway.
Scrape ice of someone elses car.
Mow a neighbours lawn.
Visit a nursing home and visit with a lonely person.
Tell someone how much they mean to you.
Give someone a “just because card”

if you do have money to give, but maybe not time, some examples for you are;
Tip the person serving your food at a sit down restaurant or a drive through with a 100$ bill.
Pay the parking ticket of someone on the street.
Pay for the person who is behind you in the drive through.
Buy coffee and donuts for your workplace
Sponsor a child.
Buy lunch for a homeless person.
leave $20 in an envelope on a park bench and address “to someone in need.”
Or “buy my house”. (that wasn’t a joke).

So you all have the power to perform random acts of kindness. I encourage you to start today. I am providing you each with a random act of kindness card (PASS OUT) now you all have no excuse not to perfrom an act of kindness. Who knows; you may get the card back someday when you need it most.
Be it one small act each day, or one large act per year, make RAOK a part of your life.
Because As the dhalli lama once said:
When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.