Be kind!

Alright, 3 people who will read this.

It's time for some tough love.  Bullying has become the latest buzzword when talking about kids.  Whether you agree with the hype or not, it's true that bullying has been going on forever.  There's probably a stone carving of some kids pointing and laughing at another kid who wet his loin cloth.

I could write a full blog about the bullying phenomenon as it is, but I'll spare you the rant.  But as I've been thinking about it, it occurred to me that bullying doesn't seem to stop as we grow older.  In fact, in a way, most of us seem to be bullies as adults, as well.  If someone is fatter than us, she's a hoss.  If she's skinnier, she's anorexic.  If they're smarter, it's fake.  If they have a better paying job, it's a fluke.  If they're driving too fast, they're maniacs.  If they're driving too slow they're assholes.  If they like Nickelback, they're sheep.  If they paint their nails black, they're freaks.  If they don't like you, they're stupid.  The list goes on and on.  This pattern of judging other people to feel better about ourselves doesn't seem to stop, even once we're old enough to know better.

So my plea in this post is simply: Try to be kind.

Our culture has come to believe that people are nice because they are weak, because they are too scared to be tough.  Nice is weak, mean is strong.

And perhaps this is true.  Perhaps we should avoid "nice" which is defined as "pleasing, agreeable and delightful."  Instead, we should strive to be kind.  Kindness is defined as  "of a good or benevolent nature or disposition, as a person."

Perhaps the difference seems unimportant, but it is not.  Being nice is fake.  We are saying the thing we think that person wants to hear so as not to hurt their feelings.  We are withholding our actual mean opinions, and saying what it seems like we should.  Kindness is much harder.  Kindness involves asking yourself why you're being mean.  What is it about the other person that makes you think something mean about them?  Chances are, it has little to do with them, and a great deal more to do with you.  You call the other person stupid to make yourself feel smarter.  We decide that skinny girl is a slut so that we can feel like we have the upper hand personalitywise even if she's prettier.  In being mean to others, we are often really dealing with our own insecurity. 

It's been tough for me, it's so easy to be mean, so easy to judge.  I still struggle with it.  I still like to ridicule people, still rush to judgment, still say awful things.  No one will ever be perfect.  But in judging the lives others lead, we get to bypass judging our own.  Kindness forces us to look at other people as people.  That guy isn't just dumb, that girl isn't just obnoxious.  He or she is a person, who has made choices, who has heartbreaks, weaknesses, difficulties.  We tend to ignore the human aspects of the people we don't know, they just become things to compare ourselves to.  But each person, whether you know them or not, is battling through the experience of life, just like you are.  They have sick family members, they are struggling with school, trying to get a good job, trying to find happiness.  They may be like you, they may not.  They may be good people, they may not.  But we all are dealing with pain, and in most cases we have no idea what kind of pain other people are dealing with.   

The poem Desiderata tells us "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."  Our meanness is often about comparing ourselves with others so we don't have to think about them being happier, prettier, more successful than us.  Accepting that I am not the most extraordinary person in the world in every way is difficult, but what a freedom it is.  Instead of trying to be better than others, we can be the most extraordinary version of ourselves.  Isn't that so much more rewarding?  If you think about it, a lot of the issues in our culture come from our tendency to look at and judge what the others aren't doing instead of looking at what we are doing.  In politics, it's okay for our side to be shady because the other side is being shady. Campaigns are often based on what the other party is doing wrong instead of presenting what your party will do right.  In the end, how does that help at all?  All it creates is a group of people who don't need to actually do well, they just need to convince us that the alternative is worse.

I don't want to get too preachy, or accusatory.  I know we all do the best we can. But maybe some of us aren't even aware when we do it, I know I wasn't for a long time.  It seems we could all use a little more kindness in our lives. 

When we talk about bullying, perhaps we shouldn't just focus on the victims but should also focus on the bullyers.  What is it that makes them need to put others down? I read an article about a new disciplinary approach that greatly affected the number of expulsions, suspensions, and referrals greatly at a particular school.  The crazy new approach involved the principal saying to the kids that got into trouble "So, you were skipping class.  This doesn't seem like you, what's been going on?"  Apparently, this helped immensely.  It's baffling to wonder how many tragedies would be avoided, how many lives changed if we just showed kids, even the trouble makers, some kindness.

The same applies for us grown ups too.  Perhaps we temporarily feel better when we are mean to others-but it is so much better-for us and them, if we are kind.

And so, my plea, after this long and arduous ramble, is to please do the best you can to be kind to others.  Whether others notice or not, whether there's anything in it for you, kindness is such a gift.  In the end, we all need kindness sometimes.  We are all stupid sometimes, we all make bad decisions, we all act selfish, we all like at least one really terrible band.  In the end, judging others won't change that.   

I hope you all are well, and keeping cool.