The Kindness Revolution

It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than “Try to be a little kinder.”       ~ Aldous Huxley

Despite living in a small northern Alberta town, we had a large class. Approximately 110 students started in Grade One, and with a couple of exceptions, the same 110 were there in Grade Twelve.

In first grade, there was one boy who was quieter than most. In the interest of confidentiality, his name will be “CHRIS”. He was small, shy, unobtrusive. He wore the same nondescript clothes we all did. He said little and did nothing that made him stand out. He was never late, or early – and probably never missed a day. He did not have any distinctive features or mannerisms. Except for one thing.

Chris was a non-white. Metis. The only “visible minority” child in that whole pod of 110 children. In fact, the whole school.

So he came to our school and was our classmate. And in all those years, I don’t remember anyone being mean to him or treating him badly. In fact, we were kind.

Kind – by completely and cruelly ignoring him, day in and day out, year in and year out. I do not recall even one person speaking to him in all those years. Not one person ever made him his friend.

One day upon returning from our Christmas holidays, our Grade Four teacher made us each of us stand and tell the class what we received for Christmas. Today this request seems like something out of the Dark Ages. One by one, we dutifully obeyed – some of us with bravado, some of us with trepidation.

Then it was Chris’ turn.

He slowly rose from his desk – and stood there. Silent. Unspeaking.

After two uncomfortable minutes, the teacher asked him to sit down.

And then — one day he was gone.

That was it. No tragedy, no big final good-bye.

One day he was there, next day he wasn’t.

Why then, decades later, am I still thinking about him?

I lament what must have been his unimaginable loneliness with this deliberate alienation. And at the same time, I now marvel at his composite bravery to show up day after day despite it all. I often wonder what he has done with his life. Did he succumb to the despair of living in and through those times, or did he become a most courageous person? Was he really that strong, or were his parents stronger by insisting he continue in the face of these circumstances? Did they even know? Was there any other choice? What was the kindest thing?

Here’s something I know to be true.

What some of us probably most regret in our lives are our failures of kindness.

There have been perhaps, moments when another human being was in front of us, suffering, and maybe we responded… sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or maybe we didn’t. We ignored them. It was kinder. It was easier.

So, a question. Who are those people that you remember with the fondest memories?

I garner it was those who were the kindest to you.

Kindness has been given a lot of press lately. Like it’s something new that has just been invented.

Bumper stickers saying “Practice Random Acts of Kindness” because for some reason we need to be reminded. We buy posters and teeshirts with inspirational quotes, and deluge social media with posts of what should be unheralded occurrences.

In our culture kindness has now become a sign of weakness. It looks old-fashioned, indeed nostalgic, a remnant from a time when we recognized ourselves in each other and felt empathy because of our kind-ness.

Kindness is now seen as a virtue for losers – someone who can’t make the mortgage payments or has a lot of extra time on their hands. Practicing the art of kindness sounds bizarre, even eerie. It may be praiseworthy, but it is not that normal.

Putting oneself in someone else’s shoes, as the saying goes, can be very uncomfortable. 

I am astonished that people are astonished by the deep pleasures and rewards of kindness.

It seems that kindness has virtually gone underground. It has become a forbidden pleasure. Nowadays when we extend a kindness to someone, they somehow feel they are entitled to it, oblivious to the giver.

Common courtesy and reciprocation have gone by the wayside. Our culture deems that we need to be kind to our family, but not necessarily to other people, or even ourselves.

All children are born kind. What happens to our natural state of kindness as we grow older?

Whatever disagreements we may have with religions, they do not stop trying to encourage their followers to be good. They remind us of how kind we want to be. Dismissing the goodness of religions, we now may have thrown out the baby with the holy bathwater. Maybe that is why we continue to download inspirational sayings – we constantly need to be reminded of our better nature.
Kindness, it turns out, is hard —that is, the ability to bear the vulnerability of others, and therefore of oneself.

(However, given what we’re really like deep down, we should spare others too much exposure to our deeper selves.)

It is this paradox that we are never as kind as we want to be, but nothing outrages us more than people being unkind to us.

But by denying our own kind impulses and making ourselves vulnerable enough to be kind, we also deny ourselves the powerful pleasure that our acts of kindness can produce.

Kindness — the foundation of all spiritual traditions — is nonetheless one of the most satisfying pleasures we will ever possess.

We’ve grown so good in some areas (landing on the moon, the faithful return of Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes every Thanksgiving, making sure our internet connection works on our hopeless little screens, etc.), we’re still ever less able to deal with things that still insist on going wrong – like traffic, American presidential elections, other people…

Kindness is a way of knowing people beyond our understanding of them.

Kindness, like most things, is about action.

Kindness is about what you do with that kindness.

So the question is always: what can we do

What if this season we focused on affairs of the heart?

To lean in and listen. Generous listening, holding space for another. Because anyone can have any size of heart they want.

What of we were to press beauty out into the world?

Small gifts. The kind that are contagious.

It’s only kindness that matters. The smallest seeds of kindness from strangers, from neighbours, from a friend, can heal the world a little bit at a time.

A single act of kindness has a ripple effect, spreading from person to person and growing as it goes. Heck, it may even make you happier.

All it requires is PRESENCE.

Have a conversation with one stranger every week. Give them 5 minutes of time you don’t think you have.
Thank someone older and younger today.
Make a donation of any amount to something or someone.
Tell someone that you love their smile.
Let that car merge ahead of you in busy traffic.
Wave at the mailman.

Start your own Kindness Revolution. Powerful, and culture-shifting.

Kindness can expand to include . . . well, everything.

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

– Naomi Shihab Nye