I would have never thought that I would read a self-help book. I like to read, but I typically enjoy a light fictional story. I thought that was the case until I found one book, "The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life" by Piero Ferrucci. This book taught me more than anyone ever could and has helped me live a better life.
One day as I was casually scrolling through my VSCO feed, I stumbled upon a photo of a paragraph from a book. I read this paragraph, and it really moved me. Ferrucci wrote, "When the terrible September 11 terrorist attack took place, most of the world knew in a matter of minutes. But some people heard about it much later. A tribe in South Kenya, in an area remote from Western technology, learned about the attack only seven or eight months later. I do not know how these people, who are not in the least acquainted with our world, imagine it to be, and what they understood about the catastrophe. But they realized a tragedy had occurred. Dressed in their multicolored garments, they held a solemn meeting and decided they would send their most precious possession –– sixteen cows –– to the people of New York to help them in this difficult moment. These people, who had known the torment of hunger, were now ready to give up their food to show their solidarity to other human beings they had never met."
After reading this, I was moved and inspired. Inspired to be a better person. Immediately, I looked up the title of the book and drove to the library. I checked it out since it was in stock, as it had not been checked out for 10 years. I started reading it right away, and I fell in love with a book.
I'm not going to lie, it wasn't easy to read this book. It took me a long time, and I kept having to renew it from the library. I read other books in between, ones with a light storyline and something I could just relax with. When I read this book, I had to be fully invested and ready to learn.
Each chapter is a different quality that the author believes makes up kindness. However, this book is not just some self-help book that is telling you what to do, but tells of things that you already do. Small things that you do or that other people do for you that help you realize what kindess truly is.
My favorite part about this book is that the author is constantly bringing up anecdotes from maybe his or of someone else's life. These stories keep the reading interesting. Ferrucci seems to have traveled and experienced a lot, making him the perfect person to write on such a topic, as he has seen the world and the people within it. And not only are there anecdotes, but statistics and tales from different cultures to support the idea that we are all kind.
The best thing about this book is that Ferrucci does not think that kindness is something we need to obtain or work on, but that it is our most basic quality that we all have. He believes that we are all truly meant to be kind, and that it is our main point of being.
