Motivational Mondays - A Random Act Of Kindness

Motivational Mondays

I have decided that, just for a change this week, I was going to write about the kind and random act of someone I don’t know personally but am very inspired by.  That’s what Motivational Mondays are for, isn’t it?  We need something to kick the Monday blues right out of our system so that we can instead, look forward to the blessings that we will chance upon along the way this week.

A Random Act of Kindness

I chanced upon the story in The New Paper in August this year about the 27 year old Lin Dilun who had donated his healthy kidney to a complete stranger, a 6 year old little boy called Brian Liu.  
Little Brian had no kidneys.  Shockingly, in the last 3 years, he was not able to urinate because of his medical condition.  When Lin read about the plight of the boy in the newspapers, he made a monumental decision to donate his kidney to Brian.  He did not simply showed up at the hospital to get the procedure done.  He had to endure 2 years of medical tests before he could finally undergo the procedure to remove his kidney so that it could be transplanted into Brian.

This was a totally random act of kindness, to a totally random stranger.  I am still baffled by Lin’s altruistic actions but also very inspired by it, knowing that there’s so much good in this world still, in spite of the pressures and complexities of life around us.

Inspired By Joel’s Dedication

I think, within each one of us, there’s always that capacity for a random act of kindness.  I am not asking everyone to donate a kidney here, but our respective acts of kindness take different shapes and form.  Here’s an example of one, inspired by Joel.

Joel’s clinical attachment at the Singapore General Hospital had ended a couple of days ago. He came home from his shift looking quite despondent and told us that he had enjoyed his stint so much that he thought it was too short.  He said that it saddened him to break the news to some of his patients that he wasn’t going to be at the hospital next week to tend to their needs and he was genuinely worried about these patients and how they were progressing with their respective medical conditions. Joel also recounted how some of his patients were dismayed about the news as they were often delighted by Joel’s visits. 

Joel spoke particularly fondly of an elderly gentleman who was going to be relocated to a nursing home.  In spite of the fact that Joel had completed his clinical attachment for the semester, and that he had no familial relations with this elderly man, he told me that he was going to find out which nursing home the old man was going to be relocated to so that he could visit him.

I am not sure where Joel’s compassionate heart came from and I would  never dare to assume that he had inherited it from us.  However, it made me proud to know that he has governed his life with empathy, kindness and generosity. 

About the writer:

The writer of this blog post is a 43 year old mother of one, who spreads her time between her day job as a marketeer at a financial institution, her hobby as a certified professional tarot reader and numerologist, and her family which includes a 19 year old son.  She's married to a Scot who has been affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" and prays that he does not find out that the term when translated, has labeled him as a "Ginger Head".