Big Adventures with Paula McGuire

SHOW of hands: whose year sucked so badly it swallowed its own teeth? OK, put them down please; I don’t have the necessary health insurance for third-party DVT.

In all depressing honesty, I can’t enumerate the ways that 2016 has put its Gregorian toe right up my hind-end. I’m not a proctologist and mental arithmetic isn’t exactly my cheerer-upper. Loved ones whipped out of my scrabbling hands, job losses and health scares; as stress inducement factors go, the Holmes and Rahe Scale couldn’t measure this last 12 months with a questionnaire and a Valium dispenser.

I’m not too proud to admit there have been days – fine, weeks – when the underside of my duvet held the answer to all questions.

And while adventure keeps anxiety from shrouding me in darkness, the bats in my belfry have a tendency to block out the light on occasion.

It’s true, I struggle at times to see the good for the trees. But struggle I do; intent as I am not to give up on optimism without a decent scrap.

Then I almost always remember just how selfish it is to expect the world to provide what I have the capacity to produce. Well, I’ve never claimed to be a pachyderm.

Perhaps a year can be cruel; maybe arbitrary units of time have such power over our collective consciousness. I’m much happier with the knowledge that each of us has the power to fight that cruelty; to put into the universe what we want to see there. This week, it was time for me to stop waiting for life to show kindness, and to just go out there and show it instead.

Random acts of kindness, as the name suggests, are ways to spread compassion without the need for a business plan or a butter knife. But, more than that, they’re a call to arms – wide, open, friendly arms – for all of us, and a reminder that there’s no better place to look for humanity than within. Except social science degrees, but that’s four years of your life you’re not getting back.

Of course, altruism has been around since the days of oxen and mangers, but the phrase that spawned this particular movement is attributed to the scribblings of writer Anne Herbert, on a placemat in the 1980s. Before she was detained for vandalism, I assume. Now a worldwide collective, the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation is a hub for positivity, providing inspiration for good-doers and resources for teachers and parents – free, obviously – to help inspire another generation of ragged trousers.

Coming up with your own itinerary, though, is half the fun, or at least two-quarters. I made a nice list, but didn’t bother checking it twice – I’m neither Santa nor neurotic, after all – then headed out to start ticking things off. Thinking back on it now, I approached that first bus stop with real trepidation – and a bit of a limp. The new shoes were probably a mistake. I guess I expected to be met with suspicion over my motives.

I just had to hope that the commuters were less Elvis-minded than I.

Luckily, Carol Hutchison and her niece, Megan Arthur, greeted my bumbling spiel with their own act of kindness, random or otherwise. And as I paid their fares and waved them off on their day together, I was already starting to feel that warm glow that comes only with boosting others – or with brandy. By 11am, I was already two deeds to the good, and feeling so buoyed by the reaction that vertigo was kicking in. Delivering flowers to a local nursing home was a particular highlight. It was well worth the small price of a few dozen cut carnations to know that one or two quiet rooms might be brightened by their bloom.

Before long, I was in full swing, planting coins in parking meters for harassed shoppers, sticking cheerful notes to doors and displays. On a brief break from the day’s merriment, I left a good book on a coffee shop table with an invitation to take it, read it and pass it on.

Then I drank some tea: well, even kindness needs its caffeine levels topped up.

For my final good deed, I made my way to Lightburn Hospital. Stopping once or twice along the road to put Christmas cards through strangers’ doors, I arrived at the rehabilitative facility in Glasgow’s east end with a box of biscuits and a determination to share them. I try not to make a habit of giving voice to the obvious – it’s loud enough without borrowing mine – but health care professionals are pretty special for the most part.

Spotting the rare sight of a flock of Florence Nightingales at rest, I quickly hijacked their lunch break to foist a much-deserved, but stupidly unhealthy, gift upon them.

With smiles that I could never have mustered at work on a holiday, the three blue-clad nurses accepted the tin of treats, determined that they would gift them to the ward’s patients. Generosity, it seems, is one contagion that hospitals are only too happy to pass on.

However you spend the last day of this year then, I hope you find compassion in its passing. If not, find it in yourself instead, and launch a year of kindness with some random acts of your own.