Kindness

I was kind before, too; I didn’t need a tragic experience to become kind. I’ve valued kindness and practiced showing it to others, growing in this practice slowly with time – beginning, perhaps, in first grade, when my class watched a devastating interpretation of Ray Bradbury’s All Summer In A Day, and advancing a bit in different relationships and different roles. I’m not always perfectly kind, of course, and I judge myself pretty harshly when I feel I’ve messed up (and now, I’m distressed to find that occasionally I’m physically unable to show kindness in the way I would like – Broca’s area actually shuts down during triggered moments and flashbacks). But I never quite understood just how important kindness was to those who are suffering. Now I’m learning.

“It is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes…”

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

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.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

meghanoc says:

January 27, 2015 at 9:45 am

so so true.

for my book group we once read (bear with me on this. I promise it’s related…) “Marry him: the case for settling for Mr. Good Enough” When we (aka the rest of the group) chose it, I was kinda annoyed- I had no interest, but then decided that the whole book group thing was to make me read books I wouldnt have otherwise. I turned out to be fascinated by the book- a mix of a dating memoir and anthropologic/sociologic look at america’s dating culture. Written by a woman who went to stanford and yale and found herself partnerless at 39, she got a sperm donor and had a kid and then went to focus on dating, trying to understand how she ended up pretty fabulous but single. one of the points she makes in the book is that the older we get the longer laundry list we have for our partner-to-be. we waited so long, of course our partners must be perfect. but she challenges that we should get three things we determine are “needs”- if someone meets those needs we have to give them a chance, if they dont, we should dump them. Everything else is a want. So my whole book group identified our three things each (an interesting thing to do among girlfriends). My needs: financially stable, wants kids and kind. At the time I was lucky enough to be dating my now husband (who also lucky enough met my three needs).

The point of my long tangent is I totally value kindness- in myself and others. I find that it is usually easier to be kind. I also struggle with some kindnesses after my loss. that poem is stunning in how it points out how you can really know kindness only after loss.

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web2mak says:

January 29, 2015 at 6:54 am

“You must see how this could be you”…On my month’s birth club, a couple of ladies had their babies arriving early, and made birth and death announcements on our babycenter thread…I swear I felt sorry for them..more with pity (oh those poor ladies(click hug buttons)) but not with kindness (this could be me and how would I want others to help me through this horrible loss?). Now I am kind to babyloss parents.

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