Our modern life is full of stress. The world has always been violent. Life, conflict, and people are all complex and there are rarely easy or straight-forward ways to handle those.
One of the keys to managing it all, I believe, is kindness. I’ll start with an acknowledgement that my thoughts on the topic have been formed through years of vast world travel and reading. In particular, the Buddhist thinking about kindness has had a significant impact on my life. Studying psychology has helped me make sense of why these approaches are so helpful, and how we can incorporate them into our everyday life.
If you’re the kind of person who thinks about how to improve your life, you may find kindness helpful. Here is why I choose kindness, and why I believe you should too.
Self-kindness or self-compassion are extremely helpful tools in our materialistic, capitalistic society. I don’t know about you, but I grew up in an environment that puts individual success at a very high value, almost the highest value of all. With this pressure to achieve and perform, comes a pressure to criticise oneself as means for improvement. I was also blessed with a perfectionist personality trait, and in combination these lead to pretty self-destructive ways of thinking. Feelings that I’m not doing enough, or thinking that I’m not good enough, smart enough or fit enough used to be regular experiences. What self-compassion teaches us, is to replace these destructive, painful, and honestly, unhelpful ways of being, with kindness. Being kind to oneself certainly does not mean being slack or lazy. It means treating ourselves with compassion and love. So instead of “I’m not good enough” we can say “I’m doing the best I can in a tough situation”. Another way to explain this is trying to treat ourselves like we would treat our best friend. Would you say to a good friend that they’re stupid or not good enough for failing an exam? Or for not getting into the university course they wanted? Would you love or value them any less? Exactly. So you should give yourself the same treatment. The result of self-kindness is often content and calm, instead of anxiety and shame.
Kindness instead of judgment. We all like to think of ourselves as non-judgemental people. But few of us actually practice being kind to others instead of judging. Judging is a natural tendency a lot of us have (including me!). It’s purpose in our mind is to help us feel better about ourselves (if we judge someone else as comparatively less than us, we feel better about our own life). But the long-term implication of our judgements are substantial. They create alienation, for starter. As soon as you judge another person, they are an object in your mind, rather than an equal, whole-rounded human. We also start thinking in stereotypes and make assumptions about people before we even realised. If you think you’re not guilty of this, notice your thoughts or feelings next time you see someone different to you. A different skin colour, accent, clothes style, language, body shape, disability status, the list goes on. Kindness instead of judgement comes with practice. Instead of judging, send in your mind love and kindness to the other person. Try to think about the things you have in common. Trust me, we are all so much more alike than we’d like to think. If you’re stuck- use the basic assumption that a fellow human will inevitably have similar needs to yours, to be valued, loved, have shelter and clothing, to have purpose in their life, to feel connected. Choosing kindness means you are much more likely to connect with another person rather than alienate them. When we judge, we often feel anxious or isolated, simply because we are busy in our mind judging and comparing. When you practice kindness, you’ll notice feeling much lighter and more connected to another, even if you haven’t said a word!
You can help someone who is suffering without even realising it. So many of us feel too busy to be kind to people we don’t know. What we often forget is that so many people around are going through serious troubles that we are not aware of, and that simple acts of kindness can make a difference. Kindness helps us connect with others who may be suffering, helping both parties feel better. Do you ever stop to think about how many people on your train or on the road are experiencing heartbreak, disability (visible and invisible), serious illness, grieving, caring for a loved one who is physically or mentally ill, dealing with recent or childhood traumas? The list goes on. Choosing kindness means you send love and kindness to those who need it. A quick chat or hello will often do. I have often stopped during my commute to talk to people experiencing homelessness, to have a chat and learn about them. I find these conversations highly rewarding and heartwarming. You can probably come up with many more ideas.
Kindness connects us all. As you may have realised by now, I believe kindness have the potential to connect us. I have witnesses this first hand when travelling to lands in which foreign languages are spoken. People who practice kindness were able to welcome me and connect with me in such a meaningful way, without saying many words.
I strongly believe kindness is the start of our answer. We must practice it, towards ourselves, our neighbours, strangers. We must practice it towards people we may have negative views of. With time, those views are likely to shift, which benefits you, me and our entire society. We can work through many more challenges if we can see the humanity in each other, first and foremost.
This is not to say I am always kind or that I find it easy to do. When I practice though, I am flooded with contented joy.
L. K. Bridgford
