I love Star Trek. I used to like Star Wars until it lost the plot and created characters with no substance and no build— a bunch of "Mary Sues and Gary Stus, unrealistically perfect, who lack flaws, and gain powers or skills without any struggle or training, making them feel flat and unearned. Ok inner teenager rant number 1 over.

Anyway, back to the intro of Star Trek: "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."
 
Ahhhhhhhh! Did you hear that scream? That was me ranting again, as I write another blog, another article, trying not to make it a trope or staple digital jargon. So, I’ll write from my soul. I’ll write because life is a journey, a motley voyage of sorts. It’s never just a five-year mission, although we may set goals to meet our self-expectations of grades, physical health, family reconnection, or financial well-being. Oops, here I go again, going off-script with the algorithm of expectations. Yes, life may feel like a vacuum sometimes—dark, endless, uncertain and with no end in sight—or, if you’re like me, regardless of the feeling, you shine the light and mingle and cheer others up. You press on regardless. Regardless of the strange things I/we encounter, I/we seek out new life—or rather, I/we meet new people and listen to their stories. When I listen I learn that in their brokenness, life is beautiful, life is kind, life is love!
Oh, by the way, it’s Random Acts of Kindness Day on February 17th, but it should be an ‘acts of kindness’ lifestyle. I am not one for making a day out of things, but rather a lifestyle. Why should I celebrate being kind for one day only and then be a total plum the rest of the year? I shouldn’t, nor should you.

I recall once upon a time when I was in Albania on a mission trip of sorts after the Kosovo War in 1998. I found an abandoned diary in a shack, and as I picked it up, I landed on a page that read: “God smiled at me today through a child!” Wow. That blew my mind! I realized the importance of a smile—the importance of simple acts of kindness.
And sometimes, in darkness and in silence, there is a scream we do not hear from our fellow community or neighbour that sounds like a song I used to listen to: Anybody Out There? by Burlap to Cashmere.

"Sometimes while I'm driving
Trying to find my song
Looking for the answers
And where I do belong
Finally the children are
Bringin' me back home."

So, this ‘acts month,’ let’s smile at one another, not just for the month but forever.

Peace, love n joy,
G Tagliarini, BACP Counselor