KINDNESS
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.”
Hadley,
Be kind.
It sounds simple, right?
Because, the opposite is be mean and we all know that’s the worst.
Because, of course.
Except not always of course. (As evidenced, in one small but significant part, by the fact that it wasn’t until my very late twenties that I would identify kindness as a mandatory, primary trait in a potential partner — higher on the list than height and good hair.)
I don’t think I really began to understand the true power of kindness until after I had encountered enough relative lows in my own life.
After sadness.
After struggle.
After loss.
After enough of those difficult experiences added up to the realization that not only is it not always easy, but sometimes it is actually very hard (the it here being the great task and triumph of living).
I find myself in increasing awe of the kindness I receive from others. From family and friends, offering love, support, understanding, a thoughtful question or a just-because flower delivery. From relative strangers who have stepped up, reached out, offered a hand or a smile on an otherwise typical Thursday.
In these moments, I’m overwhelmed by the generosity, the gift of goodness. And thankful (each time, without fail, but sometimes admittedly more in hindsight than in the immediate moment) for the reminder that I could always give more too.
George Saunders said it first, but I will repeat it again here, for you, because I agree wholeheartedly and it’s a nice ongoing reminder: “what I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.”
I can look back on all the times when I wasn’t as kind as I should have been (including as recently as two hours ago, with the blameless woman on the other side of my customer service phone call) and I can see where I stepped off course. A moment of fear, irritation, impatience. A moment of forgetting—that the person I’m encountering is actually a real live person, too.
I read somewhere that the word kindness literally means to recognize another’s kind-ness. To see, in another of our kind, our shared vulnerabilities, shared grievances, shared humanity. I love that thought. And maybe it makes sense then that we have it naturally as children, seem to lose it for a while when we are busy trying to become our separate selves, and then, later in life —after having struggled on our own, after having our hearts broken and our fears realized — can come to know and appreciate it once again.
Of course, despite knowing how this equation works, I’m still very often collecting those failures. Turns out, kindness, like everything else, is not a permanent destination. But I'd be surprised to find a more worthy path to stumble along.
Recognize your kind-ness in everything, Had. Seek what’s shared in animals, in nature, in people of all types. And extend that gift of compassion not only to them, but right back to yourself, too (that part is trickier than it sounds).
Very much is how I love you.
Aunt Liz
