Two weeks ago, when I wrote that my only new-year resolution for 2009 is to be a kinder and gentler person, I had ideas of what I might be doing. It is not difficult. To be kind is generally thought of as performing simple acts that help others. We learn it early in life when parents teach sharing to toddlers with the admonition, “Be nice.”
Kindness is defined as a sympathetic interest in the welfare of others. It is exhibited through consideration and compassion. It appears at many levels. We offer it in small ways to be merely considerate and gracious. We extend it in greater ways to show benevolence and mercy.
We often exhibit kindness daily without given it much attention. Kindness can be no more than good manners – holding a door open for someone else, helping an elderly person into a coat, allowing another driver to proceed ahead of you. It is a niceness that costs virtually nothing.
Kindness can be a compliment when needed – a word of praise for a job well done, a pat on the back for effort that did not deliver a win, a “you’ll do fine” send-off to a shy child headed for kindergarten or anxious teen going to college or nervous adult starting a new job.
Kindness manifested in benevolence digs deeper into ourselves and our resources. We give something – attention, time, money – to someone in need. We send cards to and visit the sick or sorrowing. We donate food and funding to the needy through charitable organizations. We offer personal services to someone needing transportation, shopping assistance or advocacy with governmental agencies.
Kindness may appear as a purposeful effort or sacrifice that offers forbearance, grace, mercy or forgiveness. To stand with quiet patience at a retail checkout line behind a 90-year-old man whose slow movements and trembling hands make paying a prolonged process is a forbearing kindness. To react with rationale and calmness in a non-injury traffic accident is a kindness of tension-defusing grace.
Opportunities for kindness may be planned or appear on the spur of the moment. We budget our time to volunteer regularly for a community service, or we may without forethought drop not only change but an extra dollar into a Salvation Army bucket. We can save for months to purchase a special gift for a loved one, or we can on a whim pay for the can of beans a cash-strapped woman at the grocery checkout handed back because she did not have enough money to cover her food items.
A kindness may be long-lastingly impactful or superficially forgotten in an instant, but kindnesses need not be compared. A kindness may be applauded or go unheralded, but kindnesses are not carried out for glory. A kindness is easier to offer to a family member or friend than to a stranger or enemy, but kindnesses are not just easy and effortless. Some opportunities appear as challenges and even come with risks.
I viewed a website set up to record acts of kindness. Thousands of entries range from the mundane to the magnanimous. Still, kindness is not something for which we keep score. It does not expect payback. Kindness is beneficial when propelled by the mind, beneficent when prompted by the heart.
Is kindness working in your life? Within a few days of reading this, share with me unplanned kindnesses you extended and unexpected kindnesses you received.
Kindness abounds. Prove it.
Sue Metzger’s columns are published on Tuesdays. She welcomes comments at firstname.lastname@example.org and by mail through the Morning Sun.