Spreading Kindness By Helping Others, Even In The Smallest Ways

Our eyes were glued to the screen. My fellow housemates and I. The date was 10 September 1997 and Mother Teresa lay in repose in St Thomas, Calcutta, five days after her death. Ten days before we mourned the death of Princess Diana and now Mother is gone too. I remember mourning for these two humanitarian icons. I remember feeling shocked that both were gone around the same time. I remember the endless news coverage.

It has been almost 21 years since Mother Teresa passed away and she remained one of the greatest inspiration for me. Thinking about her death still brought tears to my eyes.

"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty." ~ Mother Teresa

Mother's dedication to helping the poorest of the poor and the needy is truly an inspiration to me. I have never been to India or witness the kind of poverty she was dealing with but I heard stories from my Indian friends on how people were literally dying on the side of the road and no one cared. The slums dwellers were infected with diseases and the cycle of poverty was very hard to break. Mother and The Missionaries of Charity also ministered to the lepers and those dying of AIDs and HIV. These people were shunned by society and to these people, Mother gave all of herself to love and care for them.

Loving the unlovable

"Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own." ~Mother Teresa

How did she do it? Where did she get the strength and courage to help the unwanted people? I wholeheartedly believe she would not do all this if not for her deep conviction and faith in God. It's extraordinary and extremely honorable.

Can I imitate her example? Do I have the courage to love those who are unlovable like those who have hurt me? I humbly believe I could if I put 100% of my trust in God. But it really is easier said than done. I am pretty sure I would make a lot of excuses and being a classic avoider, I would probably never want to deal with it.

But other than making effort to reconcile with those who have wronged us, I am sure there are other ways we can show love to others. We can start to extend simple kindness to those within our sphere of influence.

Showing kindness to other Steemians - introducing Team Malaysia sub-community: TeamMalaysiaBabes

"Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home." ~ Mother Teresa

We don't have to do big things to make a positive impact in this world. A small act of kindness matters too. I could never do something like what Mother Teresa did but I could do something to help those around me, like helping newbie Steemians to find their footing in this amazing platform. Recently we have seen a huge increased in Steemit membership. I believe one of the reasons we have more people joined this platform is because a lot of initiatives and workshops were held in different countries in recent months. One of such workshops was held in Malaysia on 24 January, The 1st 2018 Steemit Bootcamp for Women.

I feel truly excited to see more Malaysian women came onboard. The founder of HER Portal, @angiechin28 even created a new Whatsapp group for the women who participated in the Bootcamp. I am honored to be included in the group too. The goal of the group is to support each other in our Steemit journey. We even came out with our own tag, #teammalaysiababes . The reason for creating this tag is to make it easier to find and support each other posts.

How cool is that?

Being a senior Steemian, I have been trying to help these awesome newbies to navigate their way around here. I try to answer their questions regarding this platform as much as I could and to give simple tips to help them write better posts. I am not tooting my own horn because I genuinely want to assist them as a way for me to "pay it forward". There were a lot of senior Steemians who extended a helping hand to me when I was a total noob. And I want to repay their kindness by helping other newbies as well.

The portrait

The reference image for this portrait is taken from here. This portrait is my first attempt to sketch a portrait using colored pencils. The technique is similar to graphite pencil but I had to be careful in selecting the skin tones. The wrong tones would create an unnatural skin color. The portrait turned out okay but there is a lot of room for improvements. I am not quite happy with the skin tones because it looks too "jaundiced". I think I need to splurge on the proper skin tone pencils.

Here are the progress photos...