Boy Scout Troop 325
Scoutmaster Minute
Kindness
8/28/07 COH
Larry Polyak, Scoutmaster

We have had a lot of rank advancements over the last three months. Thirty to be specific! That's great! That means that I have been doing a lot of Scoutmaster conferences. During those conferences, I always like to ask a question about the 12 points of the Scout Law. It's printed right on the front of your program tonight. Sometimes I ask which one is the most important to you. I have gotten a lot of different answers. One scout said the most important one to him is being reverent. Another said that trustworthy and loyal were the most important to him. Another said helpful. I started to think about how I would answer this question if someone asked me, and I wasn't really sure.

Then something happened at summer camp to help me form an opinion. It was the last night of camp and I saw a scout who was obviously in a bad mood for some reason. He was taking it out on other people and was disrupting some of the staff on purpose. He was not being very kind. When I talked to him about it, he said "People can't always be cheerful!". I didn't know what to say at the time. He was right actually. We can't always be cheerful. Sometimes we are in a bad mood. I know I am sometimes. We can't always be helpful either. Sometimes we don't have the skill or the resources to help. People get dirty so can't always be clean. It is hard to be brave in every situation. People often question their own reverence.

But it seems to me that we can always be kind. There is no excuse not to be. It doesn't cost anything. It's not hard. It doesn't usually take any time. Being mean to someone serves no purpose and is only going to make matters worse.

I went looking for other people's thoughts on kindness and found two quotes from the Dalai Lama, a Buddist spiritual leader. He once said: "Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible." He equated kindness with compassion, and also said: "If you want to make other people happy, practice compassion. If you want to make yourself happy, practice compassion.".

I think there is a lot of truth to that. So although I wouldn't say that kindness is the most important scout law, I do think it is one that we can and should practice all the time, with anyone.

Thanks for listening.