Kindness Starts With One®

RAKtivist: Lemeeze

I’m Lemeeze Davids, a 20 year old Blogger and Art Student at Stellenbosch University.

I live in South Africa, and we have this Zulu word, “ubuntu”, which is basically all about human kindness. The word “ubuntu” is about seeing yourself in your community and in others. I am, because we are. It’s about smiling at strangers as you pass them, it’s about sharing your food, and it’s about helping others in need. 

It’s one of my favorite philosophies because what I take from it is that when I am kind to someone, I need nothing in return. My kindness to others is a kindness to myself.

Sometimes being kind can be difficult to remember with the world rushing forward. Often I see a lot of ideas that kindness is a weak trait – that it’s an every-man-for-himself world – but I don’t think that’s a very sustainable way to live. We all need each other. The philosophy may be an ideal one, but no one can say that it hasn’t helped my country rise up from a very terrible past and put us all on a journey to something better.

The one thing that always helps me is to take a step back, and ask, “Am I embodying ubuntu?”