Whatever
we praise, we can cause to flourish. We can choose,
moment by moment, where to put our attention, emotion,
and intention. "Our visions begin with our
desires," wrote Audre Lorde. "Comic vision
often leads to serious solutions," wrote humorist,
Malcolm L. Kushner. "If you think you're too small
to make a difference, you've obviously never been in bed
with a mosquito," wrote Michelle Walker.
"The
everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up
for the acts of greed in the headlines," wrote
Charles Kuralt in *On the Road with Charles Kuralt.*
"Keep
what is worth keeping. And with the breath of kindness
blow the rest away," wrote English novelist, Dinah
Mulock Craik. Here's to making more opportunities to
play, laugh, celebrate, and "say it better" in
cultivating kindness as life's genuine
"keeper."
Life
contains few absolutes, and one of those few is that
kindness usually cultivates connection, something we
yearn for in a time-pressed, ear-to-the- cell-phone,
relationship-diminished culture. After all, the heart
can be our strongest muscle if we exercise it regularly.
Yet being kind is not a guarantee of safety from hurt
— nothing offers that failsafe comfort. "Kindness
and intelligence don't always deliver us from the
pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love,
of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the
danger out of human relationships," wrote Barbara
Grizzuti Harrison in an article for McCall's magazine
way back in 1975.
"When
we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives
means the most to us, we often find that it is those
who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures,
have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our
wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can
be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion,
who can stay with us in an hour of grief and
bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing,
not healing and face with us the reality of our
powerlessness, that is a friend who cares," wrote
Henri Nouwen in *Out of Solitude.*
Years
ago from a college classmate, I heard a Persian proverb,
"With a sweet tongue of kindness, you can drag an
elephant by a hair."
"Constant
kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt,
kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and
hostility to evaporate," wrote Albert Schweitzer.
"He who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who
plants kindness gathers love," wrote the Greek
religious leader, Saint Basil.
Kindness
is often unspoken. "An eye can threaten like a
loaded and leveled gun, or it can insult like hissing or
kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness,
it can make the heart dance for joy," wrote Ralph
Waldo Emerson. At another time, Emerson wrote, "You
cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how
soon it will be too late."
"You
may be sorry that you spoke, sorry you stayed or went,
sorry you won or lost, sorry so much was spent. But as
you go through life, you'll find -- you're never sorry
you were kind," said Herbert Prochnow.
"Kindness
is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of
this is the beginning of wisdom," wrote Theodore
Isaac Rubin in "One to One."
"Life
is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of
little things, in which smiles and kindness and small
obligations win and preserve the heart, said English
chemist Humphrey Davy.
"We
cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is
formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at
last a drop that makes it run over. So in a series of
kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart
run over," once wrote the Scottish lawyer and
biographer, James Boswell.
"We
are told that people stay in love because of chemistry,
or because they remain intrigued with each other,
because of many kindnesses, because of luck . . . But
part of it has got to be forgiveness and
gratefulness," wrote columnist Ellen Goodman.
From
an artist's perspective, ballet dancer Mikhail
Baryshnikov once said, "The essence of all art is
to have pleasure in giving pleasure."
