What is kindness?

It seems like a simple enough question but the answer doesn’t jump out at me. The word’s origin is related with words like kin, mankind, and it’s why phrases like “kind of, kinda” are about things having a “family resemblance”.

So it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that the origins of kindness was about treating people as your kin. And the contemporary assumption there (for me, at least) is that you treat them with love and respect. But I don’t know how much of this would be true if you go back in time? There is a lot of cruelty in creation myths and origin stories – a lot of jealousy and murder. Cain certainly wasn’t being very kind to his kinsman Abel when he murdered him. But we’re supposed to see this as an aberration. Cain’s murder was a violation of the social order, and he was ostracised for it.

These days when I think of kindness I think one of the first phrases that pops into my mind is also a biblical phrase, albeit from the New Testament – Corinthians: “love is patient, love is kind”.

One of my wordvomits that I reference often is 0675 – being smart vs being kind. In it I describe what I consider to be one of my most pivotal personal shifts. I think I’ve always cared moderately about being kind, but it wasn’t particularly a huge priority for me then, and I didn’t see very well how it intersected with every facet of my life.

More recently I tweeted that it took me several years of practicing being kind to others before I really began to learn how to be kind to myself. Some of my earlier wordvomits are a little hard for me to read now, because I can see how I was in fact being harsh and unkind to myself. And with time and experience I’ve come to see that it didn’t even help at all! It mostly only made me feel worse. And I’ve come to believe that we can’t bully and coerce people into becoming better people, because all we do is teach people that bullying and coercion is how we get things done.

But what is kindness, anyway? How do we know if we’re being kind to ourselves and others? I have some vague strains coming to my mind now but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to capture all of it satisfyingly in the span of one wordvomit. Which strikes me as all the more reason to give it a shot. What is kindness? It’s easier to talk about what kindness is like. Kindness is gentle but firm. Kindness listens. Kindness is supportive and encouraging in the right ways. Kindness brings out the best in people, appeals to the better angels of their nature.

I once read something like “the kindest thing you can do for someone is to spare them needless shame”. Googled it, turns out to be a remix of a Nietzsche quote – “What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.” And the next line is “What is the seal of liberation? To no longer be ashamed in front of oneself”. That all feels related and thematically correct.

What’s the kindest thing anybody’s ever done for me? I always find myself thinking of my ex-boss Dinesh, who took a chance on me when he hired me, and was a patient and supportive mentor, like a coach and a therapist who paid me to grow and flourish as a person, to do my best work. It seemed like an unfair advantage to have in life, to have a manager/boss like that for more than 5 years, so a lot of what I try to do is to pay forward his kindness. Maybe somebody might say, well of course he did that for you, he was your boss, he had a financial incentive to extract the best performance out of you. And there’s a truth in that. And yet, why is it that not everybody talks about their bosses in such glowing terms?

I can think of other kindnesses people have gifted me with. Even complete internet strangers, who have, through their blogposts and YouTube videos, helped me learn and understand things better, without demanding anything of me in return. Kindness is a gift that we can gift ourselves and each other, kindness is something that’s beyond the short-term utilitarian calculus of the marketplace, beyond dollars and cents.

I sometimes think of both Buddha and Jesus as figures – maybe ideas, at this point – about non-coercion. About grace, love, generosity, kindness. About choosing to be tender and gentle with the world, even in the face of selfishness and cruelty. There are some tactical considerations that arise when you’re an imperfect human who has to struggle to survive – you could say that maybe kindness is something that you can only really practice and afford from a position of strength. I think there’s a truth in there, but also not quite. It’s not that simple. Some of the kindest people are also the poorest, people who share what little they have with others.

I have another thread where I use a Star Wars analogy – the Dark Side and the Light – the side of selfish, tyrannical power, where you can win by playing dirty – but how that side is not worth it, because it’s the side without friends. The tyrant has no friends, he only has subjects, rivals, enemies. Even when you win that game, you lose, because it’s a life without friends, a life where you’re always watching your back, where you sleep with one eye open, because your own second-in-command, or your own son, might betray you, murder you for a scrap of the illusion of power. How small that is, how puny, how sad.

I can’t say with confidence that one can live life with perfect kindness. We are only human, after all. But I think there is a fork in the road – there are people who try to be kind, and people who don’t bother, and I think the companions that we find en route to kindness are the best kind of people. The kind of people who are genuinely happy for you, to see you overcome your own trials and obstacles, people who cheer for you, and you cheer for them too, people who share and partake in joy.

I believe this applies at every scale of human reality, even in the interactions between the sub-agents or sub-selves within our own minds. I wrote some old wordvomits about wanting to destroy the saboteur in my head. I realise now, that like Lincoln said, “do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”