David Jamilly describes himself as an introvert, however you may know him. He was one of the secret millionaires, the founder of Kindness UK and a quiet and supporting advocate for providing kindness to those who need it. He does this with little fanfare or media, and I was keen to understand where the journey came from.
He talks about a time you would sit at a dinner table and you never heard the word kindness, but now we hear it in politics, corporations, and celebrities. He had made it his mission many years ago to start the conversation, starting forums and asking, ‘What about Kindness?’.
For me, I had a sense that he felt something and decided that while it wasn’t popular he knew it was the way the world needed to go. There are people in the world who have impacted our existence, yet we know very little about them. We might believe that someone talking about kindness today has influenced the kindness conversation. However, from all my interviews and the people I have met, I know this has been generated from people like David who have done extraordinary things without anyone knowing. Starting a conversation that has grown.
When I asked him about a culture of kindness and what it meant he said this:
"I think that it starts small, you know, start with the people around you, and try and help to spread that warmth of a kind community. That is the best thing anybody can do or any organisation can do. It doesn't have to be big and grand, it doesn't have to cost money, it just has to somehow engender and let that spark of kindness come to fruition by itself, which it will.
I am asked often, ‘Are we born kind?’. And I have no doubt in my mind that kindness is in every single life form, including human beings. I often use the analogy that it's like a bowl of water with some colour dye in it. And if you keep shaking it up it becomes part of the water, if you do nothing then the dye just drops to the bottom; but it's still there. So, I think that talking about kindness, using the word kindness, acting in a small way around your particular area of life, peace, you know, leads to a much bigger impact on a much bigger societal level."
Comments