Is Your Kindness Kind?
Inspired by their Rosh Hashanah resolutions, many people are in the mode of doing more mitzvos. Not everyone can take on the running of a big organization or do big chasadim that take time and money. Here is a mitzva that everyone can do, young or old, rich or poor, Jewish or not Jewish.
The mitzva is kindness. Kindness is available to everyone and can be done at any time and to anyone, even a stranger or an animal. You just must be aware of what is going on around you. In some ways, it might even be a bigger kindness to do something that seems small than to do something that seems great. Everyone who is capable of it would save a person from drowning, even if they have terrible middos, but only a kind person will give tzedaka to a man who approaches him in the middle of the street. As we know from the Torah, Hashem chose Moshe to be the leader of the Jewish people because he took good care of a little lamb.