This Month’s Theme is
Kindness
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Kindness •
An Invitation
By Namoo Chae Lee
‘Don’t be kind to me’, I once said to my British friend. It confused him deeply.
For a long time, I believed kindness was a hoax — a polite veil that concealed a lack of real interest in others. I always felt it mattered more to listen, to pay attention, than to perform niceness.
That belief hardened when I first arrived in the UK. People were almost aggressively kind, yet the exchange never travelled any deeper. They were kind at me, but rarely chose to speak with me. Their kindness felt like a mirror for their own self-image: I am a good person. I began to resent this surface-level generosity. The border I had crossed felt internal as much as geographical.
And then there were moments when people dropped even that veneer — when kindness evaporated and rudeness took its place. I was shouted at for no reason, or for one very specific reason: being foreign. Sometimes the hostility was physical. Whenever I tried to explain these encounters, I realised my friends and I were not speaking about the same world at all.
Because sharing a geographical location does not mean we live in the same world.
A homeless person, a commuter, a migrant, or King Charles — we might occupy the same city, but we walk through completely different realities layered on top of one another. They do not always meet; often, they never touch.
That’s when I began to appreciate kindness differently.
Not as virtue.
Not as politeness.
But as a buffer — a fragile membrane that lets these parallel worlds coexist without collapsing into violence or indifference. A small code between strangers: I don’t know your world, but I acknowledge you exist in it.
With time, I’ve realised I can use kindness in my way: as a small opening, a gesture of invitation. A way to tell someone from another world, I recognise you, and if you wish, you may enter my world too.
Kindness
By Suyoung Park
Every act of kindness or malice begins in our hands.
May they lean towards kindness.
Here’s a dance of two gentle hands coming together:
11+11=Light and Sweetness
By Minhee Yeo
On an early November evening, the chill of the season has already settled over the sky and streets. Today is 11 November, Saint Martin’s Day. Children across German-speaking towns gather in small groups for a Laternenumzug, a lantern walk, each carrying a lantern crafted with their small hands. Stars, moons, animals, and all sorts of quirky shapes flicker in the dark as they wander the streets, singing lantern songs. The story of Saint Martin — who, in the 4th century, cut his cloak in half to share with a shivering beggar — still seems to live in the gentle glow around them. Holding these lights, the children experience generosity and compassion firsthand; just as a single light brightens the darkness, small acts of kindness can warm the world bit by bit.
Half a world away, in South Korea, 11 November is a day for sharing long, thin, chocolate-coated biscuit sticks called Pepero. The date 11/11 was intentionally chosen, as the four ones lined up in a row resemble the slender shape of the sticks themselves. First made in 1983, Pepero slowly became a playful gift in Busan, where schoolgirls handed the sticks to friends with the wish, “May you grow tall and slim like this stick.” Lotte, the confectionery company behind Pepero, picked up the trend and promoted Pepero Day through the mid-1990s, helping the day and their product spread nationwide. Though commercial in origin, it has become a light-hearted way for anyone to say thank you, show affection, or simply share a small moment of sweetness that might otherwise go unnoticed. These exchanges, whether offered with sincerity or simply for fun, create little moments of delight.
Laternenumzug and Pepero could not be more different, yet they share something simple: both are invented traditions — one deeply rooted in history and the other coined commercially — that let people reach out to one another. From Berlin to Seoul, 8,500 kilometres apart, these small practices offer light, sweetness, and tiny gestures of care and connection, reminding us that even on the shortest November evenings, small acts, whether serious or playful, can warm the heart.