Kindness: July 2023
A coworker once told me that kindness was overrated. In other words, it wasn’t as important as some made it seem. I wanted to disagree but I had a hard time arguing her point. We were successful professionals who had our basic needs met—food, shelter, safety. We weren’t dealing with any significant life challenges at that moment. During periods of calm and ease, kindness can seem frivolous. Who needs it?
Turns out we all do. Inevitably, we will all face moments when we must work through grief, disappointment, despair, anger, what have you. I believe these are the moments when kindness can best be understood and appreciated. These are the moments when kindness feels like a hug we really needed to give or receive.
I always return to the poem “Kindness,” by Naomi Shihab Nye as a way to contemplate the value of kindness. With compassion and carefully chosen words, Nye shows us when kindness matters most.
Here’s an excerpt:
“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.”
We invite you to dig deeper by reading Nye’s poem and exploring the links below:
Meditate: 5-minute Kindness meditation
Watch: Kindness boomerang – my son showed me this powerful short video that follows one act of kindness as it passed from one person to the next.
Listen: The Science of Happiness - Episode 74: 24 Hours of Kindness