Kindness Is the Ground We Stand On
Coming back to ourselves when the world pulls us off balance.
Have you ever tried to offset someone’s anger with kindness? Not because you agreed with them, or because they deserved it. Simply because you hoped it might help.
Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it just pissed ‘em off.
That’s the thing about kindness. It isn’t how we create change in other people. It’s how we keep from being changed by anger ourselves.
There’s no shortage of reasons to be riled up right now. Every day we’re met with headlines, arguments, injustice, cruelty, and an endless stream of outrage. We see trolls and people carrying so much unhappiness that they can’t help but throw it at someone else’s success or even their small moments of joy.
Some of the kindest people I know are exhausted by it all. I get it!
I’ve caught myself reacting instead of responding. Trying to fix someone else’s anger with advice. Calling people out because they were simply being mean.
Meeting frustration with frustration leaves me feeling a little guilty, and not like myself.
The cycle feeds itself. Every time we step into it, we give away a little of ourselves. We become just a little less like the person we know ourselves to be.
That doesn’t mean we’re supposed to be perfect. We all lose our footing sometimes.
The intention isn’t to control every emotion. It’s to notice when we’ve been pulled away from ourselves and to choose to return.
I’m not talking about performative kindness. I’m talking about kindness that comes from alignment. When what we believe, what we say, and what we do all come from the same place.
Real kindness isn’t pretending everything is okay. It isn’t smiling while resentment simmers underneath or saying what we think a kind person should say.
Real kindness is honest. It can set boundaries. It can say no. Kindness can speak the difficult truths without trying to diminish another person’s humanity.
We create boundaries to protect what matters most to us. But they only work when we respect them ourselves.
Sometimes that means putting the phone down, or walking away from a conversation that has stopped being a conversation.
Other times it means saying nothing at all because adding one more angry voice won’t make anything better.
When I’m off balance or unsure of myself, I try to come back to kindness. Not because it always tells me exactly what to do, but because it reminds me who I want to be before I decide what to do.
Then I can ask myself: Is this kind? or… What’s the kindest thing I can do or say here?
Sometimes the answer is to speak, to shut up and really listen, or to walk away.
Lotsa times the answer is to wait until I can respond from the person I am instead of the emotion I’m feeling.
Kindness isn’t only how we treat other people. It’s how we protect ourselves from becoming someone we don’t recognize.
The world is very good at telling us what to react to isn’t it? Kindness reminds us what to return to.