I grew up thinking that kindness was always a good thing, that giving was always generous, and that helping someone was always right. Then I learned better. Oh my!
Last week I wrote about the importance of being kind to ourselves and the different strategies we can take to ensure we are being as kind to ourselves as possible. Since we humans are communal beings, we are naturally caring for ourselves as well as others. Self-kindness nourishes us so that we can best give to others—so that we can give from a place of fullness.
Basically, if we practice caring for ourselves, it is much easier to treat others with such care, because we have done the work, put it into practice, and realized the value and ease it brings.
In a recent conversation with me, the poet and author Kehinde Badiru said, “To be kind to yourself, you have to allow yourself grace, and that grace comes from remembering that today was yesterday’s tomorrow. Cradle yourself with kindness”. Considering this idea of being graceful with ourselves, it would naturally come to reason that we should in turn be graceful with others. I’m not referring to a physical kind of gracefulness, such as a flamenco dancer’s twirling and flourishing. I’m referring to grace as an attitude and as an accommodation in the face of a challenging situation.
Grace enables the persistence of kindness, when trouble and conflict are afoot.
I want to dig further into the meaning of Badiru’s quote. The concept of “allowing” ourselves grace suggests that we are permitting something external to come into play. We are inviting something new, something different, something fresh. Grace does not come easily. It is like bravery in the face of fear. It means that although things are hard, we choose to do the right thing. Martin Luther King Jr. said “It’s always the right time to do the right thing” and yet, it might not feel like the right time if we don’t have the energy or aren’t feeling emotionally balanced. Nevertheless, we make it the right time to do the right thing, by doing the right thing whether or not we feel like it. But what is the right thing?
Different things can feel right to different people.
When I think of kindness toward others, I think about doing things for people and helping them in some way. The thing I really want to highlight is that we don’t always know what is best for someone else, though we might think that we do. For example, missionaries can bring their religion to people as a gift, but also as a requisite. Sometimes people are given free food and resources, but is it really free if they must promise to give away their soul or release their own traditions and cultural values? I would say that true kindness toward others would involve gracefully taking into account their own interests and desires, and then shaping the gift to fit. Graceful giving might even consist of taking a respectful step back and refraining from gifting, but rather, offering time, space, and agency.
As I mentioned at the start of this piece, I grew up thinking kindness was always a good thing. Now over the course of a lifetime, I have come to realize that kindness depends upon the impact it makes on the other person. One person’s kind gesture might not feel like kindness to someone else. In the same way, giving is not always generous. If we give something to someone that in fact they do not want, they may become the recipients of a burden. Is it generous to give something to someone when they do not want it and might even be inconvenienced by it? We need to know why we are giving, and also if the person on the receiving end views what we are giving them to be valuable.
We can always ask ourselves if there are strings attached to our gesture, keeping in mind that genuine kindness is purely given. It expects nothing in return. It is not only humble, but graceful with its humbleness. Let us study what others perceive as kindness, so that we can give them the nature of kindness they would most appreciate.
The root of kindness is observation.
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