The Selfishness of Kindness

"Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true."  Robert Brault

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” Samuel Johnson

I will confess to not always being a kind person. This isn’t news to my friends (I’m sure). A while back I decided that the value of being honest with people, a trait I was sorely in need of, outweighed being “nice”, if being nice was defined as not being honest. Sometimes I just like to call idiots “idiots” – and while at some higher consciousness level, I recognize that there may be reasons why they disagree with me (my number one criteria for defining someone as an idiot) but that really doesn’t change stuff a lot.

Sometimes I feel crotchety although I don’t think I am quite old enough to really wear that comfortably.

I admire Dr. Constance Brennen on Bones (FOX) for her ability to accurately peg a situation without sugar-coating it, but also without seeming in any way malicious or intentionally hurtful. She is a bit of a role model to me.

I guess I like to know where I stand with people – so it seems natural that I assume that they want the same in return. Knowing they want the same honesty in return, I want to be honest about how I feel – but that doesn’t mean I am out of tune with people’s feelings or sensitivities. Or that I don’t think of others, even ahead of myself occasionally. For me there’s kind talk and kind doing. Kind talk doesn’t always cut it for me. BS is still BS. If you say something and it’s not what you really think, the generally accepted word for that is lying. Better (probably) to say nothing at all. Kind doing is another matter…and since what we do flows out of who we are, I think that’s a more genuine marker of our natural bent towards kindness.

Recently I read a research study that suggested kindness is literally contagious. (I read it by accident, it was co-authored by James H. Fowler, and I had been googling James K. Fowler, who wrote the Stages of Faith – so it’s a different James Fowler – who’d of thought?...Then, I found a cool video interview of James H. Fowler on The Colbert Report which upped my esteem for the wrong James Fowler quite a bit)…Anyway, According to Science Daily:

“When people benefit from kindness they ‘pay it forward’ by helping others who were not originally involved, and this creates a cascade of cooperation that influences dozens more in a social network.”

“In the current study, Fowler and Christakis show that when one person gives money to help others in a "public-goods game," where people have the opportunity to cooperate with each other, the recipients are more likely to give their own money away to other people in future games. This creates a domino effect in which one person's generosity spreads first to three people and then to the nine people that those three people interact with in the future, and then to still other individuals in subsequent waves of the experiment.”

One simple act of generosity, consideration, or thoughtfulness can literally have a domino affect, eventually touching people you have never met and may never meet. In a very real way, kindness can expand our positive impact on the world way beyond the limitations of our individual reach. How totally cool is that?

We might not be able to see it or measure it, but if we all make a conscious choice to be generous (the tangible form of being kind), we can create the kind of world we want to live in, starting with ourselves.

So then the question of “What does it mean to be kind?” surfaces again, and for me being kind boils down to being selfish…I’m not kind because I want you to like me, I’m kind because I want me to like me. Kindness and generosity serve me because they feel so good.

Want to do a random act of kindness? Go to Wendy’s (the fast-food restaurant), buy a half-dozen Frosties (mmmm….) and then anonymously deliver them to people. People you know, or you don’t know…doesn’t really matter. If you’re depressed it’s a sure cure. Keep one for yourself, of course.

Other tangible ways of being selfishly kind…(Thanks Lori Deschene for some of these cool ideas)

• Listen without forming an opinion or judgment. Just listen. When you just listen it means you don’t have to work at forming an opinion. Just be present. Let someone tell a story without the need to one-up them or tell your own. Just listen. Easy-peasy.
• Give without expecting something in return. See Wendy’s exercise above.
• Help without feeling or acting superior. One of the strange things I think about a lot of church work is that doing something turns into a ministry, which translates into I have something to offer you from my abundance to your lack…there’s other less flattering translations too, but the general view is a position of inequality. Sometimes this is reality. You need a buck. I’ve got a buck. I give you a buck. Now you’ve got a buck. Sometimes it’s more complicated when I start to feel superior because I gave you my buck and I start wondering why you aren’t more grateful. See previous bullet point.
• Be willing to say no if it’s the best thing you can do. Here’s where the honesty thing comes in. Sometimes I can’t help you, or do what you ask, or even what I see you might need – without a lot of baggage, or the potential for baggage. Resentment, entailed feelings, dependencies, blah, blah, blah…Better to just say no. Keep it simple. Let the Universe provide. It will – via another channel. If there isn’t joy in your heart when you are asked to do something – take a breath, step back, and evaluate if your heart isn’t telling you to skip this opportunity.
• Be kind to yourself – it’s the first step in being kind to everyone else! Ha! Like that is going to happen…What does being kind to yourself even mean? Well, it means recognizing that any desire to fix people, enable people, be all things to all people, or to continue in relationships that have lived long past their natural shelf life, are holding you back just sure-as-shooting as if some judge had handed you a prison sentence. Why would you do that to yourself? Being kind to yourself might mean examining what you really think about yourself. What you feel your place in the world is (do you really think you’re a doormat? If not, why are you insisting on being one?)

Do you feel your self-esteem is defined by how much of a martyr you are? Is that what you think Jesus wants? Seriously? What may have worked for Joan of Arc probably doesn’t apply to you so put away the matches and quit stacking firewood for the pyre, because you can do better.

The most important thing – be selfish – do these or things like this because it feels so great to do it. Never because you “should” do them, or because you imagine Jesus/Buddha or whoever wants you to do them. Because you want to do them and when you do, life feels wonderful. Plenty good reason enough. How do you spread kindness around you? And can you be honest about why?