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Have you seen your doctor lately?

Local doctors provide "rescriptions" for kindness in Keremeos

 

Throughout the summer months our Keremeos doctors are handing out the same prescription to all of their patients.  It reads:  “Practice kindness, three times per day, or more often as needed, to feel good.” It also carries this warning:  “While one can not overdose on this medicine, it may become habit-forming.  Kindness can also be contagious.”

If you haven’t seen your doctor, you’ve likely seen the “Practise Kindness” posters displayed in the windows of most of the business places throughout our valley.  It’s posted in the lobby of the Keremeos RCMP building too.  While it’s not a law, maybe it should be. More than simply good advice (which it is), a very wise man (the Buddha) and a very powerful healer (Jesus) both taught and practiced it, using very nearly the same words. Many since then have called it a “rule”. Stronger than that, we’ve come to know it as the “Golden Rule”: “Treat others as you would like them to treat you.” Think about that. While it is simple, it is not simplistic. Rather, it is simply profound.

Put into practice it could make a world of difference. In fact it would make a different world. But for now let’s just focus on making it contagious right here, and right now – in our own homes, and throughout our valley – one simple act or word of kindness at a time. Several times a day.

I recently saw a Hallmark Card. Its cover read “You are the very definition of niceness.” Inside it said “I am the very definition of thankful”.  If you had that card, who would you send it to?  Go ahead, call that person right now, and tell them.  And wouldn’t you feel good if you received that card from someone else?

 

Wouldn’t it be good if we all, in the words of Hallmark Cards, “cared enough to send the very best”?   PVPP, the Lower Similkameen’s Proactive Violence Prevention Project, has chosen “Practice Kindness” as our spring and summer theme.  As the poster says, “Practice Kindness Indiscriminately.”  Infect others.  It’s contagious.

 

- Ron Shonk