This week I was bestowed with a “Humanitarian Award” from Bike Book Reviews. I am terribly humbled and flattered. Receiving recognition of my efforts with youth is wonderful beyond description, yet it’s strange to receive an award for being kind. It’s how we’re supposed to be toward one another, isn’t it?

A friend of thirty years calls me an “altruistic idealist.” I conclude it is a backhanded compliment, at best. In this “I/me” era where the “law of reciprocity” (Golden Rule) has been replaced with the “law of you owe it to me to understand me,” who’d want to be qualified as a selfless romantic? Shouldn’t I be out there looking to serve my own needs? Shouldn’t I be out there devaluing friendships and throwing them to the wind for fear my friend is costing me attention or public adoration? Telling half-truths? Shouldn’t people need me because I need to be needed? Shouldn’t I be out there looking to get rich, and doing so at the expense of others? Shouldn’t I be out there expressing outrage over a cause that doesn’t affect me in the least? Jumping on the next catfishing lie bandwagon? Shouldn’t I be out there on social media publicly dissing anyone who offends me? No thanks to any of these. I prefer to make people happy if I can. Before you go off on some “people pleasing” theory, I’ll simply say anyone who knows me, knows that isn’t me. Besides, making people happy is not always about giving them what they want. It’s about kindness.

I was exposed at an early age to many of the horrors of manunkind, and I have chosen to dedicate a good portion of my life to working with abused youth. Attempting to help rebuild a life that has been utterly destroyed is a tall order and kindness, above all, is an absolute must—never selective, forever directive. The experience has given me a bittersweet perspective of kindness, but one that is, nonetheless, for the better: it isn’t hard to put to practice.

Kindness is something we all have. It’s an innate quality, and we need more of it expressed out there. That’s the point of being a human. Thank you, Bec, for the high honor.

“There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.”― Jean Cocteau

See you back here next month on Thursday, August 17th!

About Cody Kennedy

Cody is an author who lives, most of the time, on the east coast of the United States. Cody also writes adult mystery thrillers, fantasy, science fiction, and romance as Aisling Mancy.

Raised on the mean streets and back lots of Hollywood by a Yoda-look-alike grandfather, Cody doesn’t conform, doesn’t fit in, is epic awkward, and lives to perfect a deep-seated oppositional defiance disorder. In a constant state of fascination with the trivial, Cody contemplates such weighty questions as If time and space are curved, then where do all the straight people come from? When not writing, Cody can be found taming waves on western shores, pondering the nutritional value of sunsets, appreciating the much-maligned dandelion, unhooking guide ropes from stanchions, and marveling at all things ordinary.

Cody’s Facebook, Twitter @CodyKAuthor, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, Ello,
Goodreads, Medium, Booklikes, and read my free serial story, Fairy.

Find Ash on blog, Twitter @AislingMancy, Facebook, Google+, Goodreads, Booklikes,
Dreamspinner Press Author Page, and Amazon
and Ash does respond to emails because, after all, it is all about you, the reader.

Pssst. Click on the captioned title of each book to read the first chapter!