Ripples of Kindness: Living Out Your Values

Introduction: Small Acts, Big Ripples

“Some believe it is only a great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”

 – Gandalf, The Hobbit

At first glance, this quote might seem simple, even corny. But it captures a truth I’ve come to understand: The most important changes, even the most real, often start with ordinary people living out their values within their ordinary lives. We usually wait for and even expect governments or big institutions to fix the world. When even these powerful systems fail to bring the change we desire, we can grow hopeless and even resentful towards the world.

But even the smallest, deliberate acts of kindness can make the world brighter, and even inspire further sparks of kindness, one ripple at a time. I experienced this first-hand when one act of generosity changed my family’s life and inspired us to act in turn.

The Ripple Effect of Kindness

In the wake of the wider world and all its many problems and even terrors, the simple Kindness of one person can feel insignificant; its impact often seems neither ground-shaking nor immediate. What does it truly matter if I held a door open for a stranger or helped a person struggling with bags? The world has so many huge issues, and they demand huge answers. Whether it’s new government policies, massive protests, or building an entire new institution/business to tackle the issue. How can anyone argue that we as individuals can have the same impact on people's lives as these powerful displays?

But kindness is like a flame: one candle may seem small, but it lights another, and that one lights another, spreading warmth farther than the first flame can ever see. Or like tossing a pebble into a pond: ripples extend outward, quietly but powerfully, far beyond the original splash.

Panic, Struggles, and Renewed Purpose

A few years ago, life felt quite overwhelming. I was dealing with panic disorder, unable to work, largely unable even to leave the house and unsure how to move forward. Tara, my fiancée, was struggling with Friedreich’s Ataxia, wheelchair-bound and navigating university with limited support. We felt isolated, cautious, and socially anxious.

At the same time, I reconnected with my dad after over a decade apart. Rebuilding our relationship was awkward at first, but it gave me a sense of connection and support I hadn’t expected. In time, this new bond helped me feel even slightly less hopeless. But I was also made aware of his situation: severe arthritis and living in essentially poverty, unable to keep the lights on by the end of each month. His condition stemming from a life of Oil Rigging, scaffolding and the type of living our lower-income and notably rougher town demands left him housebound, in near-constant pain, waiting for NHS surgery that wouldn’t come until he was 65 (another 5 years after the 10 he’d already waited). He had lost hope.

I couldn’t fix everything, but I could help, like he helped me when I was at my lowest. I became his caretaker, cooking, cleaning, assisting with daily tasks, these small ways I was able to help dad gave me purpose. Caring for Tara alongside him reinforced it. Helping others, even in small ways, made me feel useful and grounded. It gave me strength and even helped ease my panic. I had a sense that I was needed in the world and could see, however small, the difference I could make to these people’s lives. I felt I'd found, if not the path forward, the resolve to move forward.

Jimmy Edwards & CARE Society

Tara and I were still socially anxious, unsure how to engage with the world. Then we discovered an online community focused on polite and constructive discussion, and that’s where we met Jimmy Edwards and the future founders of CARE.

That community would eventually collapse after failing to live up to this ideal, and for most, this would be the end of that little arc, a fun dabble in our proposed values without any further action to back it up or fight to maintain that kind of space. But Jimmy didn't do what most do; he didn't just write it all off, he didn’t wait for someone else to create the kind of space he wanted. He acted, he founded the CARE Society, a platform where students can direct their own learning through projects, learning pods, and respectful dialogue, to use what he'd learned and follow up by doing.

What stood out to me quickly about Jimmy was that he didn’t just talk about values,  he acts on them. He takes responsibility, supports others’ ideas, and invests in people he believes in, beyond simple or performative words. The CARE Society isn't just another platform, it's a space for students of all types who are seeking a unique way to learn. These students include those who struggle in traditional education, those who may be learning-impaired, those who are asocial, or those who simply need a more flexible or practical approach to learning, any one and everyone who would prefer to take charge of their own learning rather than waiting for the inefficiencies of traditional education to catch up to their needs.

Seeing someone live out their principles in such a tangible way inspired me in a way that words alone never could.

A Life-Changing Gift

At one point, someone suggested I set up a fundraiser for my dad’s knee surgery. The NHS had said he would have to wait until 65, and five more years would have been unbearable. I created the fundraiser, mainly out of politeness to the suggestion; I never expected anything to come of it, and for a good while, nothing did.

Then, all of a sudden and seemingly out of nowhere, I was informed that the full cost of both surgeries had been covered by a single donation. This was later revealed to be Jimmy, who had tried to maintain anonymity until the transferring of funds required direct coordination.

When I spoke to Jimmy, I worried I hadn’t shown enough reaction. It didn’t feel real, something that only happens in corny TV shows but never in real life. I awkwardly tried to find the right words for something so insanely big and yet somehow not real enough to believe physically. I honestly still don’t know how to even begin to say thank you enough.

Jimmy had known us online for only a year by this point, and while we were friendly and worked well together, though we’d never met in person, in fact, we lived on the other side of the globe, but Jimmy chose to live out his values in action. He learned of our situation and, seeing how he himself could make a difference, did so without asking for a single thing in return.

It wasn’t just financial help, it was a demonstration of acting on values, of kindness and integrity. My dad couldn’t believe it, insisting it must be a scam or that it was just a dream he’d soon wake up from. Even now, several months after the first knee surgery, he tells me he wakes up in awe that someone he's never met, who at the time he’d never even spoken to, who lives thousands of miles away, had given him the ability actually to walk unassisted for the first time in 10 years, he’s since even tested running a little.

He still gets emotional and feels overwhelmed by gratitude, worrying about how to properly thank Jimmy, a sentiment I share as well. He’s determined to pay it forward and embody in himself the same kind of strength and kindness that Jimmy has shown him, reconnecting with and helping other struggling family and friends, helping me in my caring for Tara, mentoring younger relatives in guitar lessons, and even aiming to volunteer when he can. To reiterate, this time last year, my dad could not leave the house without assistance and had become nearly totally isolated from his former social life.

Even everyday tasks feel different now: shopping, cooking, cleaning, tasks that used to leave him in pain, now leave him filled with gratitude and a reclaimed sense of dignity.

Inspiration in Action: The Ripple Spreads

Jimmy’s kindness didn’t stop with my dad. It inspired me and Tara to look for ways to act on our values and further the ripple ourselves.

For me, this has meant stepping outside my usual, lab-based work and socially anxious tendencies to explore roles that help others directly. This has included:

• Becoming a course provider and learning pod leader with CARE, focusing on confidence, health, and small self-improvement steps.

• Starting a personal trainer course, with the aim to specialise in NHS referrals, particularly for older or ill people and introverts, so I can continue to help people in the same positions that my dad, Tara and I found ourselves in, people who need help finding a way to start.

• Being more conscious of everyday opportunities for kindness: getting food for homeless people, going the extra mile to support the people in my life, finding ways I can take on more responsibilities, or creating exercise plans for friends with health challenges to help get them past their own anxieties.

Cementing the concept of Kindness and its long-reaching ripple effect was a recent experience of Tara’s. A former acquaintance she hadn’t spoken to in seven years suddenly appearing out of nowhere during our housing crisis and, after a year of struggle, swiftly helped us find emergency housing, ending an incredibly difficult arc that the UK Government, with all their power and resources, couldn’t solve in over a year. That small act, from years ago, returned in a way we never expected, reinforcing how kindness spreads and multiplies.

I’ve no doubt in my mind these days of the incomparable strength of ordinary kindness from ordinary people, all this renewed faith sparked by people like Jimmy.

Living Out Values and Finding Direction

What struck me most is that Jimmy’s generosity wasn’t performative, it was real, deliberate, and rooted in his values. CARE Society isn’t just a platform; it’s a living example and model for how living your values can create truly positive change.

A place where educators and students alike invest in each other's success, supporting and guiding each other to empower ourselves and take charge of our own learning and growth.

Through this experience, I’ve found a sense of direction and purpose I hadn’t felt for years. Even when dealing with devastating challenges like finding accessible housing for Tara, I was able to keep moving forward because I didn’t feel as alone as I once did. The countless ripples of small kindnesses built up over the last few years, both through Jimmy & the CARE Society as well as my own family reconnections, have steadily swelled up into a powerful, compassionate and supportive network of people I can trust and rely on, who inspire me to find ways I can pass the ripple on further still.

Conclusion: Be the Pebble, Send out Ripples

One act of kindness changed my dad’s life. But it didn’t stop there, it rippled into my life, Tara’s, and the broader work we now do with CARE Society.

Kindness multiplies when it’s lived. It spreads beyond what the first person can see, teaching, inspiring, and giving hope.

So I invite you who reads this to reflect: where can you embody your values today? Where can you light a candle, toss a pebble, or take one tangible action, however small, to make the world brighter? You don’t need grand gestures, just action rooted in your values.

Because when kindness ripples, however small it starts, it can change lives in ways we cannot yet imagine, just as it's changed my Dad’s, and just as it's changed Tara’s and Mine.

- Thank You, Jimmy and Everyone Else at CARE Society, whose ripples of kindness extended to Me and Tara and far beyond.