I try to keep on top of things, sports, politics, where myself and my family need to be on any given day. Unfortunately, there is a frustratingly large amount of stuff that I seem to be the last to know, things like what foods the little is currently finding acceptable, the teenager’s love life. Add to that list “friendship rocks”, a trend in our community that it appears that I was the last to know about.
For my local readers that have been participating in this all summer, and based on the Facebook group I was just added to, there are a lot of you, I apologize. This post is probably of more interest to those in other parts of the country, other areas of the world. If it turns out that you all already know what I’m talking about, I’d encourage you to take a peek through my archives. Lots of good stuff there.
Apparently what is happening is that people are painting rocks, pretty pictures on some, cartoon characters and such, but mostly messages. Messages of peace, love, affirmant and positivity. They hide the rocks in parks, alongside athletic fields, sometimes outside stores or in parking lots. They take the rocks with them on vacation, painting their area code on the back and leaving them in other states for people to find.
The cool thing about this is that the people that find these rocks don’t keep them. They are re-hidden, the message passed along. Its a never ending scavenger hunt, a perpetual passing of good will disguised as an Easter egg hunt.
So we’ve been painting rocks. We paint them, hide them, find some new ones and then hide those. Its been a great new activity as the summer winds down and I’m increasingly running out of new ways to keep her busy. More importantly, it’s been a great way to encourage empathy and kindness. She spends a lot of time on these little projects, with the only goal being furthering the happiness of others, to help somebody else “have a good day” as she puts it.
The world needs more “friendship rocks”. We all wish that we could change the world, to make it a better place for out children. Maybe this is the place to start, one rock at a time.
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Previously published on thirstydaddy.com.
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Photo credit: author
