Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
I will be brief tonight, because I’m tired. If you’ve read the last couple of issues of Odd Company, you’ll already know that my husband had a lung transplant about five weeks ago.
In the midst of all this, we’ve had the rainiest, windiest winter in decades. Fallen trees, downed power lines, electrical outages lasting days, floods, broken levees, “bomb cyclones” featuring hurricane-force winds. We’ve had types of weather I’ve never seen before — wind so powerful that it turned the rain to an aerosol and made it hard to take a breath. On two occasions, I needed help to keep my footing on the short walk from the hospital’s parking garage to its front entrance. It reminded me of climbing Mount Rose, back home in my younger days. We’re expecting yet another “atmospheric river” to descend on us tonight.
Since the transplant, we’ve had a series of adventures. Some were medical, and ranged from challenging to terrifying. Currently, John’s been home from the hospital for the past few days, can breathe again, has stopped losing weight, and has gotten a little bit of color back in his cheeks. Much of this is due to the skill and efforts of the lung transplant team at Stanford. But much is also due to the kindness of friends and family, who have brought us everyone’s favorite comfort foods — everything from hearty soups, stews, and casseroles to homemade breads, plus a truly impressive procession of cookies, cakes, muffins, and pies. But people have also volunteered their time and talents again and again in many other ways to help us find a path through these difficult days. So it’s probably no surprise that the subject of tonight’s Odd Company is kindness.
There are thousands of pieces of music about kindness. I had trouble picking just one. In the end, it was a close race between Tim McGraw’s “Humble and Kind,” a father’s advice to his children (and very good advice it is); and the one I ultimately chose, “K is for Kindness,” from the old kids’ TV show, Sesame Street, featuring Chris Jackson. It has a certain crisp concreteness. Scratch a puppy’s ear, make cookies for your mom, listen and stay calm. And why should we be kind? Because it makes us feel good, among other things.
Recently I came across a compelling quotation by the moral and social philosopher Eric Hoffer. “Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind,” he said.
I know Hoffer best as the author of The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, and The Ordeal of Change, which I read decades ago in an effort to gain some insight into Al Quaida and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I have searched in vain for the exact source of this quotation. It could have come from any of Hoffer’s many books. But I suspect The Temper of our Times, or Working and Thinking on the Waterfront. He was a longshoreman, entirely self-educated, which makes him all the more impressive.
We are made kind by being kind. I think he’s right. I also think the opposite is true. We are made cruel by being cruel. When we form a habit of behavior, we become that habit. That is why it’s so important to stay aware of what we’re doing.
It’s a matter of consciously choosing kindness over and over again until it becomes our way of being in the world. And the cast of Sesame Street is right, too. It’s easy because it makes us feel good. Charles Darwin thought altruistic behavior probably evolved (by which I think he meant kind behavior makes us feel good) because the ability to get along with others increases our chances of survival. If we are kind, others are more likely to care about us and offer their help when we need it. But also, it’s just a lovely feeling.
I should have taken a picture to go with tonight’s poem, when the daffodils were sitting on my counter in their red jar. Alas, I did not. You’ll have to imagine them! Till next time…a very recent poem by yrs truly, with many thanks.
GIFT FROM A NEIGHBOR
Three neat bundles
of daffodil buds
cut short, twine-tied
in a red glass jar.
In four days' time
all have opened,
small yellow suns
brightening my kitchen.
Brief glory, these
first rays of spring,
a reason to rise and sing
the jubilant world.
I've always admired Eric Hoffer--I think his theories about why people gravitate to fundamentalist modes of thinking are right on. And I think that practicing kindness, behaving kindly even if one feels unkind, is the best way to become a kind person. But I have a problem with "It’s easy because it makes us feel good. " I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately, there's no lack of people who get their kicks from cruelty. There are predators who take joy in wounding and killing, who consume the grief of their victims much as a tiger consumes an antelope. Harming provides their sustenance and is their mode de vivre. What to do about such people, how to open them to the different and (kind people think) greater joy of kindness, as I see it that's the paramount issue in trying to ameliorate the world's suffering. It takes a lifetime's education and practice, or a revelation, to instill kindness--and often even these don't work. For those who live by cruelty, often (unless they realize and activate a latent need to change), kindness is a threat or an invitation to more cruelty. It's not easy. And it can terrify as well as please. How do you tame a wild human animal?