kindness and compassion

who do you want to be? not even career wise, just as a human being. who are your heroes? are you doing everything you can to be like them?
the world is a messed up place. some would say we can't change that. i say we can. there are so many things that are easy to change but we just... don't. it takes five seconds to compliment someone who might be having a bad day. there are millions of small contributions anyone can make to society every day. some of them are environmental. bike, walk, bus, skate, or carpool instead of driving. shop locally to decrease the amount of driving done to put food on your table. but i feel the most important contribution anyone can make to the universe is kindness and compassion, because it spreads. if you're kind to one person, and they're kind to one person, and that person is kind to one person, and the next person is kind to one person, you can see how quickly that could increase kindness in your area. but then what if you're kind to everyone you see? how much more quickly would compassion to everyone else spread? compassion is such an important issue because it affects everything we do. we can be kind to our earth, other people, animals, and ourselves.
positive psychology focuses on the positive elements of the human mind rather than the disorders and malfunctions many other branches of psychology focus on. it's becoming more popular now, and there are many books about obtaining happiness using methods learned through positive psychology. i think we need to do with our own outlooks on life what has been done with psychology. yes, we do need to figure out how to solve problems, but we also need to focus on making ourselves happy by doing things we enjoy. so, if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go make today a random act of kindness day. because like h.h. the dalai lama said "if you want others to be happy, practice compassion. if you want to be happy, practice compassion."