I used to only know kindness. These days, kindness is a choice I make.
For so much of my life, I’ve been someone who plays to the whims of others - do what I’m told, make everyone welcome, be the good student, play nicely. This was my default “programming”. Put your hand up when you want to speak. Ask for permission to go to the bathroom. Give your seat to those who might need it more. I’d never really questioned why. I’d not really given much thought about how doing these things made people around me respond - how it had the ability to change how others felt. I just did it, because that’s what was told to me, was ‘right’.
I didn’t have to make people happy. I was just conditioned to. Kindness was my default. People may have responded positively - or other times they may have not. Maybe this time I should have been kinder. Maybe that time I was too considerate, at my own expense.
I recall an time in my student days where I’d offer to help friends by replacing their phone screens, or internet problems whenever they arose. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was inevitably spending more time helping them than I wanted to. What stuck out to me was that I genuinely didn’t even see how much time it was costing me. Or that I wasn’t obliged to help.
Cut across some years - and I’ve gone through much to do with trying to be kind, even where I shouldn’t. Trying too hard to please everyone, and failing catastrophically. But for what? For what purpose? Was being kind something I genuinely wanted to do?
At some point, I’ve realised that being kind is a choice. In the same vein, you are allowed to be an asshat. It is necessary at times. The good isn’t good without the bad, and the bad isn’t bad without the good. Extrapolating further, what the fuck even is “good?“. What’s good in one scenario, could be catastrophic in another. Being unkind in one scenario may ultimately result in a kind outcome. Who can say? It’s a big fucking loop where anything could do anything. Whatever.
So why do I still choose kindness? Why give, more than I have to?
Because the world could use more of it. There’s so many shitty things we all go through. A bad day. A bad week. Things out of our control. The last shove that pushes us off the edge. Whatever the cause - life is difficult as it is already. And I would like to make it less so.
Not too long ago, I came across Lara Hogan’s article, where she argues one should be a thermostat, not a thermometer. It helped develop my perspective in an area where I’d previously only dabbled in - the idea that we can strongly influence others and their emotions, for better or worse. This pathway is more impactful than to be beholden to the ambient mood surrounding us.
I’d rather be the one to risk being at a loss, than let the opportunity of something greater pass me by, because I was not kind. I’ll keep trying to invite people in - to be the vulnerable one, despite the discomfort.
There’s times where I’m not so kind. Where I need to establish boundaries. When I need to put up the walls and shouldn’t be vulnerable. Where my fragile need for external validation wouldn’t be able to handle the rejection so well. There’s been countless times where my kindness has been taken advantage of.
But that’s okay.
We don’t need to be kind to each other for the world to go round. We can just be defensive, reactive, and transactional. In some aspects of my life, I am.
But when I think about what I go through, I think that others probably go through something similar. If not similar, then better, or worse. And I think about what would make things easier for me, for them. How we could be more understanding, more safe.
And so I choose kindness.