Kindness and Lent

"Lent is a time to renew wherever we are in that process that I call divine therapy.  It's a time to look what our instinctual needs are, look at what the dynamics of our unconscious are."
― Thomas Keating

Today is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Lenten season.  At a Mass today, the priest shared a humorous story about a French priest who was walking through the streets of Paris on a cold night with a bag of pastries that he had just bought when a thief tried to rob him.  When the priest opened his coat and the robber saw the clerical collar, he said, "Oh, Father, I am sorry.  I would not have tried to rob you if I had known you were a priest."  The priest offered the thief a pain au chocolat, but the thief replied, "Oh, Father, I couldn't -- I gave chocolate up for Lent."  The priest's point today was that Lent is an opportunity to soften our hearts, to become kinder people -- not to give up things that don't really make us better people like the thief and his giving up chocolate.

What can each of us do to become a kinder person during Lent?