Little generosities good for health as well as uplift

The floral feelgoods have struck dozens of Southlanders. The Central Southland Floral Art Club has deposited bouquets around the province, with little notes inviting people to take them. There’s no expectation of donation, no great marketing or promotional agenda, no social scientists observing from the background to record reactions for research purposes. Just the disarming explanation that the thought of giving pleasure to others gives pleasure to the club members. They did it last year, with 50 to 60 bouquets, and it will be more this year, as part of an international initiative.

Here are gestures that brighten the day not only of the participants at both ends of this transaction, but potentially the rest of us us who could do with reminders of our community’s capacity for generosity.

The bouquets will have a limited life, but not so the memory of them. We tend to recall such kindnesses vividly and for ages.

Hence the endearing story of Roger Button, an English schoolboy whose family received relief parcels from Southland to help see them through a miserable period of post-World War II malnourishment. As the years passed, he worked, saved and waited his patience until eventually he was able to show up here, find one of those donors from up Dipton way, and shake his hand. That it took him until 2012 only enhances the story.

In the depths of last winter, some Invercargill residents were showing up shivering at bleak, darkened bus stops to find plastic bags containing prettily knitted woolly hats with anonymous helpyourself notes.

And let’s not be cynical. The commercial world, or the better parts of it, do step up for honourable roles that go beyond self-promotion. A recent case in point the Shoe Clinic donating sneakers to schools where they could remove a barrier that might be preventing a young person from a sportier, healthier lifestyle.

This newspaper’s vaults are well stocked with accounts of kindnesses, including letters from people telling of, say, the time they were lining up to pay for their groceries or meal cashier who discovered the person ahead of them had paid for them.

Or to acknowledge strangers who had approached them in the street with a modest gift, or sometimes a scratchie card, with a note hoping for nothing more than the recipient has good luck with it. Or, in other cases, that they ‘‘pay it forward’’ as the saying goes.

It’s a fine thing when communities and individuals act in support of people who are assailed by circumstance.

But standing honourably among all that that we have ample evidence of little, less urgent acts that are simply expressions of good-spiritedness, not necessarily impelled by any conspicuous need.

These speak of a way so many of us want to live. And they are actually a big deal.

At very least they’re the grace notes to our lives. Perhaps even more fundamental than that. Mother Teresa said not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. From the analytical scientific world comes the strong message that a sense of empathy is profoundly important for our health and prospects for happiness.

Somewhere between the saint and the scientists, we have a harmonised encouragement; less a revelation than an affirmation because, deep down, we kind of knew this already.

‘‘The bouquets will have a limited life, but not so the memory of them.’’