Arlington kindness initiative a break in social media vitriol

While attending Arlington’s second annual prayer breakfast a few days ago, I heard Mayor Jeff Williams announce that the city is launching a kindness initiative.

While the sound of it appealed to me, I really didn’t know what it was.

The mayor later explained that such a program, which he learned about while attending a recent meeting of the U. S. Conference of Mayors, had been very successful in some other cities.

In all the ways such an effort would benefit the community, it comes at a time when we seem to be in particular need of trying something other than arguing with each other via the social media and ruining friendships.

Recent reports have found one in five Facebook users have unfriended someone because of political posts on the wildly popular media that currently has some 231 million of us in North America connected with others.

If 20 percent of us have cut off someone we previously accepted as a friend, that means more than 46 million broken relationships.

Sure, some of them were an original act of courtesy and not a real friend in the traditional sense. Still, ending our contact with someone solely because of political differences reveals a kind of disconnect among us that has gone viral.

We have a new president who some support and others do not.

His actions since taking office less than a month ago have brought all kinds of chaotic reactions, a good deal of them criminal in nature, followed by vitriolic responses beyond the streets where it has transpired.

Never mind that he is proceeding to do what he said he would do while campaigning this past year. Supporters and opponents alike have made it a priority to participate in the free-for-all that has broken out.

Helping other people in some positive ways would be just the thing to tear us away from all of that, getting us to try instead try to make a positive difference in the lives of others.

The new administration will advance its agenda for at least the next four years, so there will be plenty of time for us to engage on Facebook. And maybe, after taking a break, we’ll do it with a little more civility and respect.

Williams seems especially encouraged by the results of the kindness initiative in Anaheim, Cal.

He spent some time with that city’s mayor, Tom Tait, learning about what has taken place since it was launched about three years ago.

Tait said he was inspired to initiate the program by a 6-year-old who had concluded with wisdom way beyond her age that “it is not enough to simply do no wrong.”

That city’s successful efforts to commit to performing 1 million acts of kindness brought the Dalai Lama, celebrating his 80th birthday, to Anaheim in 2015.

Speaking of what was happening there, his holiness’ emissary said, “This is the way to achieve peace in the world and you are making that happen.”

One of the elementary students in his audience that day offered an explanation of her experience: “It feels like a spark in your body that comes up like fireworks!”

The good kind of fireworks.

If you are wondering about the success Anaheim is having toward its goal of a million acts of kindness, they count them continuously on the city’s website and are well past the halfway mark as the initiative gains more participants.

It seems a reasonable conclusion that vacating the social media fracas and turning instead to a higher calling would be a good thing.

A citizen task force is already working on just such an opportunity in Arlington.

This story was originally published February 10, 2017 at 6:34 PM with the headline "Arlington kindness initiative a break in social media vitriol."