The kindness revolution
Every morning, on the bus ride to work, three high school friends get off at their stop and each one repeats the same two words as she exits out the back door:
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
One after the other, they say the words just loud enough for the bus driver to hear. I’m not sure what effect it has on him, but it brings a smile to my face and I find I look forward to hearing the friendly refrain the next day.
Beyond dispelling the stereotype that young people are rude, the polite and respectful gesture seems to be yet another example of something that appears to be on the rise: A kindness revolution, if you will.
There seem to be signs of it everywhere.
In an interview with Anna Maria Tremonti for a Windsor Star magazine, I asked the host of CBC Radio One’s The Current which character trait she admires most. Her answer: “Kindness.”
In a column about the return of the Montreal Canadiens coach, the Montreal Gazette’s Jack Todd tells the story of how Claude Julien once helped a neighbour struggling to build a deck:
“Julien might have been the coach of the exalted Habs, but he didn’t hesitate. He got his tools and essentially built the deck for his neighbour.”
In another post for Personal Growth on Medium, Hilal Isler wrote of having “kindness on the brain” and how she wished it were as “cool” as sarcasm and irony.
On social media and especially in commentary feeds that you read at the end of news stories, kindness would appear to be an endangered species. There are so many harshly personal, vicious comments out there. Yet here was my wife, who is reluctant to engage in any online war of words (or inflict a perceived insult), defending love on Facebook after Valentine’s Day.
In my community, the local Canadian Mental Health Association has launched a worthy initiative to raise funds and awareness about the scourge of mental illness in Windsor-Essex. It’s called the Sole Focus Project and one of its ‘ambassadors’ is a colleague, Anna Cabrera Cristofaro.
Anna approached kindness from a unique perspective, speaking out about the importance of being kind to one’s self.
If there is a kindness revolution, it’s not clear what set off all these sparks of divine light. I suspect much of it is a backlash against the mean-spirited, hateful administration of Donald Trump.
Certainly, actress Meryl Streep’s heartfelt speech at the Golden Globes swelled with the milk of human kindness. In speaking out against Trump’s bullying humiliation of a disabled reporter, she rightly pointed out that his kind of behaviour brings out the worst in people and “gives permission for other people to do the same thing.
“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Predictably, Trump responded to her message with more disrespect and bullying words, calling her “one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood.”
Kindness isn’t new, of course. More than 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ started his own revolution by asking us to, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Around the same time Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria reportedly said the words that are still being repeated today: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
Abraham Lincoln, in a plea to hold his union together, famously coined a phrase that would find itself in the title of a book by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker more than a century later:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Mahatma Gandhi (“The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer”), Nelson Mandela (“You cannot do a kindness too soon, because you never know how soon it will be”) and Mother Teresa (“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless”) — all of their words have rung out through the years.
And back home, the late Canadian political leader Jack Layton inspired a nation with the message he wrote shortly before he died:
“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”
Kindness isn’t about doing a random good act one day or week of the year. And while it’s heartening to read poll results about how most people perform acts of kindness every day, it is a little discouraging to learn of their motivations: More than half of those polled say they do it because it “makes them feel good” while others cite religion, karma, accolades and financial gain.
What if being kind is an end itself? What if an act of kindness is like a declaration of a truth that we know to be self-evident: That by being kind, we don’t necessarily get rich or buy our way to heaven; maybe our action spreads out and helps to create a heaven here on earth?
What if the reason why we need to be kind is because everyone we meet is fighting a hard battle?
To be sure, not all of us can conduct our daily work by being kind all the time. Some of us work in adversarial fields where we have to beat the other guy: journalism, the law, union work, hockey, politics. There are times when kindness can be exploited in conquest.
There are times in the day, as the T-shirt reminds us, when we have to kick ass, others when we have to show kindness.
There are honourable rules of engagement that some of us choose to follow. Rules that define our integrity, make better people of us all by respecting the adversary.
Not all of us are like the campaigning presidential candidate who chose to mock a disabled reporter.
Some of us, even those who coach hockey players to go out on the ice and beat the other team (with fists if necessary), can find the time to help a neighbour build a deck.
Kindness finds its way in the world, even if it’s in two simple words that three girls use each morning when their bus comes to a stop.
Joanna Parris, an ‘etiquette nanny’ who thinks and writes a lot about the subject, found the story about the three teen girls on the bus “heartwarming.” She sees a connection between good manners and being kind. And maybe changing the world:
“Manners are about making others feel comfortable and showing appreciation; therefore by extension, our good manners make us kind.
“Kindness is about being friendly, generous (with our time and knowledge), and showing concern for others. It encourages us to express gratitude and empathy towards others.”
Why is it important to be kind to one another? Parris says “the simple act of greeting, acknowledging or helping someone, creates a chain reaction. It puts both you and the recipient in a better mood, which will rub off on the other people with whom you come into contact.”
She signs off by quoting the writer and social and political philosopher Eric Hoffer (who Trump followers would be wise to explore for his ideas on mass movements): “Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.”
Claudio D’Andrea has been a journalist for 30 years, writing and editing for newspapers, magazine and online publications. You can read his stuff on LinkedIn and Medium.com and follow him on Twitter.
