Day Seventy Six: Kind

I am a kind person.

I really am, even though I might not seem like it sometimes. I try to be nice to everybody, especially strangers. I believe that kindness is what makes the world operate at a functional level. Without a certain sense of propriety for one another, we would simply descend into the madness of a barbaric pre-modern world.

Think Zombie Apocalypse but no one says please or thank you.

Kindness was bred into me by my family and by the culture I was raised in. I didn’t go to a normal school as a child, I went to one of those yuppie progressive schools. And while my learning might or might not have been stinted by a lack of classical structure, I was taught from a very early age that people matter. I was given the opportunity to regularly demonstrate my kindness among my friends and with my family. I was praised for it and it grew in me.

I see a lot of kids these days who aren’t kind to each other on a basic level. A little boy I occasionally watch told me that his mommy told him that he didn’t have to share his toys if he didn’t want to. He also admitted to me that no one wants to play with him on the playground anymore. It would be a vain attempt to get a five year old boy to understand why these two ideas correlate with one another. It was also a vain attempt to get his mother to understand that what she told him, while functionally correct in the real world, is not an okay concept for kindergarten.

I imparted on him the same wisdom that a teacher once told me: It doesn’t matter how bad your day is or how much you don’t like somebody. Be nice and everything will be better.

Challenge to my Readers:

If you have enough to share, share. If you don’t have enough, share anyway. If you have nothing, be kind. Do good in the world and be nice to people. Kindness isn’t about good deeds or about giving money to charities, it’s about being decent to your fellow man. So get off your phone at Starbucks and actually speak to your barista. Ask someone else how their day is going. Demonstrate to everyone that we are no separate creatures, but one human entity.