On Kindness

I've been thinking a lot lately about kindness -- the kindness of strangers, the kindness of friends, the kindnesses we trust and the ones that we don't. I believe that being kind is the most honorable of traits and yet its presence is so quiet and unassuming that it often gets taken for granted. We forget that the counterpart to kindness is sacrifice because kindness requires submission: Submission to the other, to the moment, to the loss of the material goods you really intended to keep for yourself.

To be kind is not the same thing as to be nice. Many people are nice but very few are truly kind. Niceness wears thin and comes with limits. Kindness sits with you in the dark, cold night when you shiver and hate and demand to be left alone. Kindness finds a way to let you be, but neither does it walk away, because your troubles are not too much for kindness. Kindness also tells the truth when your wallowing wears thin, but does so in a way that continues to be about you, your needs, your life, your hurt, your potential and your possibility. Kindness says, get up, let's go inside, let's try a new space for awhile. Kindness offers chocolate chip cookies underneath an old afghan on a worn-in sofa. Kindness fits. Kindness waits. Kindness hopes on your behalf.

Kindness. Sometimes it hurts. At least sometimes it hurts me. It drudges up the times that I tried to trust in its presence and pull that afghan up underneath my chin, only to discover the blanket was fraying in my fingers and the cookies were all burned. To recieve kindness, one must flirt with the possibility of disappointment, because nobody, no matter how kind, can come through on every occassion. This sucks. And to be human in this wild world is to desire distance from the chance of getting let down... again.

I just don't want to be disappointed again.

It hurts so much. To know and to receive authentic kindness is to risk a great deal because it means walking into the kitchen, taking the cookies, sitting down on the sofa and knowing -- damn it, knowing! -- that hurt is going to follow. The only question is, how big is the hurt going to be? I think this is why so many of us enjoy so much accounts of the so-called kindnesses of strangers, anonymous gestures of incredible munificence that come without explanation and leave us speechless in their plentitude. We aren't just mystified and grateful for the magnitude of the gift. No. I postulate that we are also relieved. We are relieved because the gift is really free, unfettered of the requirement of reciprocation or, often worse, the humility that can come in knowing who helped you and not being sure of whether you're worthy or why why they did it in the first place. Instead, the question of, "Why me?" goes unanswered, as do the needs for direct payback or syruppy, sycophantic thank yous.

Known kindness improperly executed excoriates its recipient. An act meant to help can cause immeasurable harm. This is the unseen but utterly felt dialectic. This is the rub with kindness, and this, I think, is why kindness is so difficult to trust. Kindness can be very demanding. How do I know, if I take your cookie, that you won't make me feel forever indebted? How do I know that you're giving me your best and not just your crummy leftovers? How do I know that you will receive my pain in dignity and hold it with grace? How do I decide not to just do it myself? My way might be imperfect, but at least I'll be free to cast blame. If you offer me your kindness, and I end up getting hurt, will I have to hold the hurt, because you meant it in your kindness? No thanks.

And yet we are stuck.

We are stuck because of the loneliness. Because it hurts so much to never depend on anybody. Because it makes us so sad. Because even though we fail each other so readily, most of us don't mean to, at least not most of the time.

And maybe because in my life nothing has felt quite so good as a second chance.

Because I've been learning lately that I suck at making it on my own. Every time I get close to hauling my own ass up to the top of the mountain, the endo does its thing and I'm back on the Vicodin. Again. On the Vicodin (I swear it isn't just an hallucination) I realize I got boosted up the mountain anyway. And I need a cookie. And a couch. And a blanket. And somebody to say, trust me, I'll sit with you, you're ok, let's wallow for a bit.