Goddamnit kiddies, you’ve got to be kind!

Jon Campbell
Aug 23, 2017 · 4 min read

I was asked what my values are. One of those exercises to help you figure out what really is important to you. Not just what I think they are, or what I want them to be. But what they really are. The things that drive me everyday to fight for what I’m fighting for.

And Love came to me.

And I came to Love.

Love is the most important thing in the world. To me, anyway. And I think to everyone, whether we see it that way or not. It’s that thing that holds us together. Why we do the things we do. When I was a kid, I asked my dad why all the songs on the radio were love songs. “I don’t reckon theres’s much else worth singing about.” I come from good stock.

But that didn’t quite hit it. The way we tend to think of love is pretty much romantic or familial, platonic love. Kind of splitting hairs, if you ask me. The only difference is whether you want to do what grown folks do when they grown and they dating. I wasn’t sure what was missing, but I knew there was something else there. Another form of love that didn’t quite fit.

I’ve been practicing Kundalini yoga for a few months now, it’s just one part of my transition into WooWoo California Jon. Throw in a little zen meditation here, some essential oils there, a dash of working with a Shaman, and you’ve got yourself a primo Cali Jon. There is definitely a metaphysical aspect to Kundalini that I haven’t really seen in other forms of Yoga, and I’ve really responded to bringing the mind, heart, and body closer together. So I’m doing one of my morning kundalini sessions and thinking about some of the things my teacher had spoken about in class. About getting out of your head and into your body. The way I’v synthesized that is that we can have belief and thought and intention and emotion, but if we do these things without action, do they ever get realized?

So I started thinking on the action of love. And what that means. Romantic expressions, sure. Caring for someone, of course. But there is one thing that crosses all of the expressions of Love that I could come up with.

Kindness

Kindness is the active side of love. Its what happens when Love moves out of the body. Every loving act comes with kindness. I hug my wife because I know it brings both of us joy and comfort. I do the dishes because I know it stresses her out to have dirty dishes laying around. I buy my friend lunch because I know they are struggling with money and I chose a place a little out of their price range. I let them buy me dinner because I know they are feeling financially shamed and need to not feel like a charity case. I choose the funny and kind joke over the funny and cruel joke, it’s not easier, but there is one more person in on the joke.

I choose not to condemn every person I come across that holds beliefs I think are patently wrong and cruel. Because I know that in their world, this patterns are the only thing that makes sense. Because I know that I can’t sum up all the life experiences they have had that bring them to where they are in a single action anymore than I can point to one thing that defines my life. Because I know we are all humans trying to do what we think is best. Because sometimes we’ve been mislead. Or misinformed. Or misunderstood.

And sometimes we see the world as a zerosum game. In order to maintain what I have, someone else needs to have less. Love is why we do what we do. We love our family. And we want the best for them. We see someone wants the same things we have and that is threat to our family. And so we fight with everything we have. It may seem like hate to someone else, but to the one taking a swing, it’s because they love their family and are keeping them safe.

It’s Kindness. To their Kind.

The word Kind can mean of a type, of a race, a family, as well as affection, forgiving, mildness. To me, there is not a choice between usages. It encompasses all of this in every usage of the word. When we see someone as our kind, they are one of us. And we are kind.

We have to look at things with a little more kindness. If we look at the person spewing hate and see the thorn in their paw. If we stop pointing to the ways we are different. If we see the ways we are 99.99% the same.

Kindness. We are kindness. We are of a kind. We are kin(for those southerners amongst us).

All it takes is a little kindness in the approach. A recognition of kind. We are all the same kind. It is a choice that we divide ourselves. We do it simply so we can see someone as a different kind and treat them as if they are not us.

I’ve seen acts of kindness change someone’s daily direction. It spreads. Like the greatest virus in the world. Or like zombies. Either way, we need an army of Kind. Unite the Seven Kingdoms to fight the White Walkers.

The best thing about kindness? Being Kind changes the Universe. Like faking a smile, Kindness will generate Love.

And we know that’s what holds the stars together.

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