Stories of Kindness from Around the World

Scattering Flowers by Fi Munro

While away on our European adventure we attended a flower parade in Nice as part of their annual carnival. This was particularly special for me as I grew up on Guernsey (one of the Channel Islands) and have fond child hood memories of their own annual flower parade.
As it was the last day of their parade, they spent the latter part of the show stripping the floats bare of their flowers and handing them out to the crowd - some quick online research has informed me that each year they hand out over 100,000 flowers to the audience rather than them go to waste.
Sadly, while this act was kind, all I observed were people fighting over one another to ensure they left with a bunch of flowers. The result was that while some people had huge bouquets, others left with their hands empty.
As we were waiting to leave, I was handed my own bouquet by one of the staff members.
“Do you know what I’m going to do with these?” I asked Ewan
“Hand them out to strangers...” he replied.
And of course that is exactly what I did. I handed individual flowers to people I passed as we made our way through the town....not just to people who had been at the event and hadn’t received any flowers, but to people out on the street too. It was one of my most joyous experiences and I plan to repeat this act of handing out flowers again soon...I think I may purchase a few bouquets and gift them to unexpecting strangers because, why the hell not?
This experience highlighted that while it was, of course, lovely to have been one of the people who received some flowers, it paled in comparison to the feeling it gave me to hand these flowers out to others and see their shock, surprise and resulting smiles.
Make the day good. Be kind.
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In case you are new to my posts -
When my loved ones raised £500 for me to treat herself following my operation for stage four ovarian cancer in May 2016 I made the decision to use the money to do random acts of kindness for complete strangers…
Since then, I have been handing out envelopes containing either £5, £10 or £20 alongside a card that provides information about ovarian cancer alongside some ‘instructions’ to either keep the money or pass it on.
I have lost count of how many envelopes I have now handed out and the pot of money continues to grow as people make donations. I also added the £600 I won in 2017 when I was awarded ‘Health Blogger of the Year’ by HealthUnlocked.
It has been an incredible part of my story and allowed my cancer diagnosis to bring joy and kindness, rather than sadness and despair.
While I was traveling around Europe recently, I didn’t have any envelopes with me but there was still, of course, always opportunities to be kind...
I encourage you to try it for yourself...wonderful things happen when you are kind xxx
http://www.fkmunro.com/kindness-2