The practice of kindness is the daily, friendly, homely caring form of love. It is both humble-a schoolboy bringing his teacher a bouquet of dandelions-and exalted-a fireman giving his life to save someone else's. Kindness is love with hands and hearts and minds. It is both whimsical-causing our faces to crack into a smile-and deeply touching-causing our eyes to shimmer with tears. And its miraculous nature is such that the more acts of kindness we offer, the more of them we have to give, for acts of kindness are always drawn from the endless well of love.

Kindness is twice blessed. It blesses the one who gives it with a sense of his or her own capacity to love, and the person who receives it with a sense of the beneficence of the universe.

If you took a blue spruce tree and planted it in the desert, it would obviously perish. How do we forget that we too are living systems, and each of us have unique environments, needs, and conditions within which we flourish or wither?

Gratitude is like a flashlight. If you go out in your yard at night and turn on a flashlight, you suddenly can see what's there. It was always there, but you couldn't see it in the dark.

To explore what it would mean to live fully, sensually alive and passionately on purpose, I have to drop my preconceived ideas of who and what I am.

The tears had turned to ink.

Once you begin to acknowledge random acts of kindness-both the ones you have received and the ones you have given - you can no longer believe that what you do does not matter.