This year I’ve started my CAS project about kindness, happiness and smiling in general. I have chosen these topics, because the idea of kindness is really important for me. I come from a beautiful country, but the concept of kindness is not easy to apprehend in the community I come from.
Before coming to Italy I was dreaming about a life with kind and smiling people.
The idea of my project is to show people how important the meaning of kindness is in our world and I, firstly want to make people become aware of how important a little smile can be in our daily life.
At the current stage I have created a poster with lots of photos of our school community where we are all smiling. The purpose is to show people how beautiful they are when they smile.
Furthermore, my poster carries on the idea that kindness helps to build communities.
Thanks to kindness you can reach agreements, give consents and trigger conciliation. To be kind is pretty more difficult than to release aggressive feelings.
Of course, for me too, it’s not always easy to be kind, but I think a kind person is at the same time smart and strong.
Aggression is an easier emotion and sometimes stupid. Of course it’s important to let our emotions spill out, but we need to find our own and, possibly, smart way to do it. I have used some statements about kindness and happiness on my poster, getting inspired by Dalai Lama.
His personality and his way of thinking truly inspire me. I like the idea that religion is very simple, because for him religion is kindness.
The essence of all religions is love, compassion, and tolerance. Kindness is my true religion. No matter whether you are learned or not, whether you believe in the next life or not, whether you believe in God or Buddha or some other religion or not, in day-to-day life you must be a kind person
Dalai Lama
I support the idea that it’s doesn’t matter in which religion we believe, we just need to be kind to people, have a good heart and be human. We need to be kind, because we don’t know about people’s feelings, problems and lives. And just one kind word you utter can make our world better. Isn’t that amazing?!
In my poster, I have also written the word smile in different languages, those spoken in our community. The words itself are really different, but what really matters is their meaning.
I thank everyone for the participation, help and support. I hope I will be able to go further with this project.
One person asked me how smiling connects with kindness.
To be honest in the beginning my project was supposed to focus only on the concept of smiling, but then I connected it with the idea of kindness, which seems to me to be of utmost importance in a world where in some of its parts smiling becomes even a problem.
Don’t mind, do smile! Smiling is a physical act of kindness that actually impacts how we and others feel. In “Psychology Today” Adrian Furnham writes “in sales, hospitality and negotiation situations the person who first smiles increases the possibility of the other person(s) smiling which increased trust and liking and therefore “co-operation” and helpfulness. Smiling helps bond people together.”
So smile and be kind! It’s free!
Eva Kolbina
IGCSE Student