My friend shook her head.
(This exchange took place via email, but I could feel the headshake in her
reply.)
"This makes it sound
like you have a hard time thinking about kindness.”
“But…I do."
I do have a hard time thinking (and writing) about kindness.
I do have a hard time thinking (and writing) about kindness.
Almost immediately I feel
hokey and preachy and self-conscious.
Self-consciousness leads to
worry. Do I receive and give enough
kindness? How much is enough?)
Worry leads to judgment. What about other people? Is kindness the
fundamental nature of the human species? No, look at all the horrible things we
do to each other. We’re awful. I’m awful! No hope! No hope…
Seriously, ask me to
meditate on kindness and in 10 minutes you will find me a quivering mess, miserably
clinging to her blankets like one of Harlow’s poor little monkeys.
So it helps me to think of
kindness as water.
We need it to live and
thrive.
Kindness is not simply a
single element, but a molecule – a combination of ingredients held together by
simple, but powerful bonds.
It’s a “universal
solvent.” In my experience,
virtually everything dissolves (maybe not completely, but mostly) in the
presence of kindness.
Kindness can change states,
sometimes quite rapidly. Under certain conditions it may be fluid, solid,
ethereal. It’s impossible to hold in one’s hands.
Over the years of our lives
the average rainfall of kindness we experience varies. We’ve all known times of
drought – desolate, tan, and withered times, green, lush, plentiful times,
times of excess when it felt we might lose our footing – get swept away or
drown in the floods of giving and loving.
Kindness can be a result of
our environment. Perhaps you live and work in a place where the climate is
predictable. Perhaps there are wild swings in the atmosphere. Your home and
work may even exist in completely different microclimates – just a mile or two
apart. You thrive in one place; shrivel in the other.
On
balance, there’s more kindness on this earth than not. According to the U.S. Geological Survey website: “About 71 percent of the Earth's surface is water-covered, and the oceans hold about 96.5 percent of all Earth's water. But water also exists in
the air as water vapor, in rivers and lakes, in icecaps and glaciers, in the ground as soil moisture and in aquifers, and even in you and your dog.” Even in the driest
places on Earth there is water and therefore life is
possible. So, too, even in the darkest
corners of human history, even in the places that seem made of evil, human
kindness exists.
Water and kindness travel in ways you cannot see or
predict.
Exhale on a chilly day and you may see the water
vapor of your breath for a moment, but it quickly dissipates and becomes
invisible. Pour water into the soil and it will be wicked away before your
eyes. Where has it gone? Will it stay where you put it?
Some of it may.
I pour water into a glass for someone I love. Some
of it nourishes that body, helps it thrive. Some of it leaves. It is breathed
out of their face. It seeps out of their skin. (Look at my sweet one exuding
watery kindness!) Some of the water doesn’t even make it into my beloved. During
the act of pouring some sloshes onto the floor (I can be very sloppy), maybe
splashes the person sitting nearby.
Some evaporates right into the air. The molecules
disperse. They soar into the atmosphere. They gather with other droplets from
other sources and high above me form clouds that grow heavy, wet. It is
possible that it may rain right here in my own town, but more likely, those
droplets (at least some of them) will travel miles and miles before they shower
down in a far away place.
It helps me to think of kindness like water.
It helps me to remember with every sip I take in to
feel nourished.
It helps me to remember when I sigh with the
satisfaction of my slaked thirst that those same molecules leave my body. With
every breath I can send kindness out into the world. And perhaps, a million
miles away, someone parched and desperate may turn her face toward the sky as
the first drops of rain begin to fall…
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