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What is your message about kindness?
In this season of peace take a moment to consider your connection, as a Scouter, to the lofty goal set by our founder:
… let us go forth from here fully determined that we will develop among ourselves and our boys that comradeship, through the world-wide spirit of the Scout Brotherhood so that we may help to develop peace and happiness in the world and good will among men.
Brother Scouts, answer me. Will you join in this endeavor?
Baden-Powell at the first World Jamboree in 1920
Sometime soon you’ll open the doors of a meeting room and have the precious opportunity to advance this endeavor.
Do we even begin to understand how important our work is in this regard?
When you take the time to promote the spirit of Scouting you are building world peace.
Here’s a wonderful moment that encourages me to look at our work with new eyes.
A couple of years ago during a visit to Minnesota Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, the Dalai Lama, was surprised (and obviously delighted) to see an eleven-year old boy was granted credentials for a press conference.
When called on for a question the boy asked “What is your message to the people of my generation about kindness in today’s society?”
The Dalai Lama answered the boy earnestly, without condescension. He says that, at eleven, the boy truly represents the first generation of the 21st century. He goes on to say that the his own generation, while having made many contributions, also created many problems.
The Dalai Lama goes on to say this new generation should build a century of dialogue without using force aimed at overcoming indifference and to wholeheartedly attempt to understand each other. He notes that we are all sharing the same planet and says the only way is full commitment to dialogue and reconciliation.
He goes on to encourage the boy to study and apply himself to learning (noting that he regrets having not done so himself at that age). In the spirit of grandfatherly advice he can’t resist adding that at this boy’s age a ‘little fighting” with his friends is natural but it should not lead to holding ill feelings for a long period.
While they may not pose the question quite so formally your Scouts are asking;
“What is your message to the people of my generation about kindness in today’s society?”
Are you prepared to answer?
The interchange is captured in the first five and a half minutes of this video:
