The Unfurling of a Vision for a Kinder World
From time to time, I get the following question: What makes you so passionate about kindness? As I reflected on that question, I realized that kindness has always mattered to me because of violence and bullying I experienced as a child, but I can’t say that it was always center stage. It really took two life-altering experiences to solidify it as a core value for me. In 2008, I had just put real estate on hold indefinitely to follow a message that had been nudging me for months to make a documentary about what it means to live an authentic life. My interest in this subject grew out of my education and training as a life coach which eventually became a way of life. But I knew nothing about filmmaking! So, I immersed myself at Santa Barbara City College to discover if I had what it would take to make a documentary film.
While taking Directing, Editing, Production and Cinematography, I was dismayed by two instructors who were using violent clips from gratuitously violent films to make their teaching points. I was so upset by this that I approached one of the instructors and shared with him that the images he was showing were disturbing to a few of us older students (I was 40 at the time). There was a pregnant pause, and then he said the following:
“You know, when films like “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will be Blood” win the Academy Awards, you forget just how desensitized we’ve all become.”
It was like the ocean had parted, and I had this epiphany, or question rather, about how was media violence affecting our children. I literally ran to my car, and as soon as I got home, I started researching this topic online. I was shocked to find thousands of research studies demonstrating unequivocally the negative impacts on children. With that, I approached each of my instructors and asked them if I could focus on one subject matter for all four of my classes and deliver one product at the end of the semester. Surprisingly, they all agreed. This is where A Kinder World, my short 13-minute documentary, was born. To my huge surprise, it won best documentary at their annual Showcase Contest, and then went on to win a couple of other awards at smaller film festivals. I literally spent countless hours creating this short film, and it still moves me today.
Fast forward thirteen years to 2021. After the previous president had rolled back decades of socially progressive laws passed to protect people and the environment, I took a stand for kindness by identifying it as one of my core values. I also co-created A Kinder World of Commerce – a campaign designed to educate our community about the importance of supporting locally-owned, socially responsible businesses and to inspire other companies to reimagine their businesses as vehicles for good. Each month we seek out and interview these special business owners and share those interviews with you in the Community Matters section of our monthly newsletter and the Community Matters section of our website.
If you’re feeling stressed out, agitated, irritated and/or struggling to cope with the vagaries of life, and if media serves as one of your sources of entertainment, there is one thing you can do right now to experiment with creating a shift in how you feel. Consider going on a 30-day media diet (you can always go back : ) Unplug from TV, films, video games and social media for just a month, create a spreadsheet and track how you feel from one day to the next. I know for certain how life-changing this can be because back when I made the film, I interviewed parents who had done exactly this with their children. Their results were transformational, both for themselves, their children and the relationship between them.
Here’s to a kinder, more compassionate world and more ease and grace in your life,
Monica
