Kindness for Appearance's Sake

Here are some more "hits & misses" from the more than 7.5 million results to my Google search on kindness quotes, this time with a focus on the unspoken "why" behind kindness.

I'm no expert on anyone's motives, but I do try to examine my own. Sometimes when we want to be "do-gooders" we do more harm than good and our reasons, while not vile, are less than pure.

HIT:

That Oscar Wilde says this speaks to its truth for me, since he was a man who understood how to command grand attention, which is related to intention. I'll stretch what he says a bit further by saying that the grander the intention, the less actual kindness is involved. That doesn't mean it's bad, but I think it does mean it's not really about kindness. 

Then what IS it about?

HIT:

Please don't misunderstand: I'm not bad-mouthing niceness! I'd much rather people be nice than not, most of the time. However, it's important to understand the difference in others and in ourselves. Sometimes if you're nice long enough it may turn into genuine kindness; be beware it doesn't turn into empty self-satisfaction. Niceness on its own, you see fails. 

I'll illustrate that with a

MISS:

This sounds "nice," but I had an all-too-literal experience with this one that fell far below the "nice" bar. For several years the library system paid me to present creative writing workshops. One year, I hosted a group at the same location on the same day and time each month. The goal was to draw a lot of the same people each time so we could get to know each other and each other's writing voice.

At the same time, a friend of mine was studying for her yoga instructor's license. We had talked informally about the benefits of combining yoga and writing. She needed opportunities to practice as an instructor, and I offered one month's session of my repeat group to give it a try. We worked together to plan yoga exercises anyone could do from their chair and writing prompts to complement them; it was fun. When the day came, she showed up with a huge bouquet of roses to dress the sign-in table; how beautiful, I thought! At the end of the workshop, she said they were for me, to say thank-you. Though not necessary, I was touched.

This same person had encouraged me to start a blog to supplement my website. As I got my blog going, conscious of the importance of links, I approached her about each of us listing the other on our blog roll. I had already listed her on mine, and I asked if she would do the same for me. Her response was very odd: She did not reply. At that time I also hosted a forum linked to my website, and I noticed she had joined it, though not contributed. When I didn't hear back about the blog roll, I followed up. She refused to address it, but said, "Well I joined your forum!" The unheard part was, "So what more do you want?" Well, the forum isn't visible in any way to anyone but members. I wanted a visible link, equal to what I'd given.

Yes, I wanted something in return for my link, so I didn't do it out of kindness. But it wasn't selfish either; both of us might benefit from the reciprocity; certainly neither of us had anything to lose. When I offered my workshop as a practice platform for her, it was out of real kindness--perhaps even love. Based on the discussions that followed regarding reciprocal links, it became obvious she gave me the flowers to "pay" me for this gift, so she wouldn't owe me the link I was bound to ask for. She had, in fact, only encouraged me in my blog because she thought it would keep me busy and make me a less-demanding friend because she was too busy to answer my emails, which, as I recall, weren't all that frequent and I never demanded answers to. 

She hoped for the fragrance of the roses she gave to cling to her hands. Instead, it ended our friendship. Sounds silly, I know. Which brings me to another

HIT:

What we choose to give without hesitation--a kindness--is a treasure we would do well to guard. That means care in how and with whom we share it. I gave without hesitation, but after it all played out I felt some regret at my losses. I did not regret opening the writing session to her--I still do not regret that--but it was hurtful to realize how little substance held the relationship together, and both she and I shared some blame in that. I was disappointed in myself for not seeing it all more clearly, sooner; however, I did learn from it.

This sums it up pretty well...

MISS:

Why a miss? Kindness may or may not "pay off" for the giver or the receiver. It's a crapshoot. It may be completely rejected, regardless of the purity of the giver's motives. That's not a reason not to do it; just something to keep in mind, because it just as surely ISN'T a reason TO do it. It isn't a kindness if you expect a return of any sort; it's a transaction. And many of our relationships that pretend to be love-based are, in fact, transaction-based; but that's a topic for another blog post.

All that said, practicing kindness, even when it begins in "niceness," can change a person over time. Not that we do it thinking, like Little Jack Horner of nursery rhyme fame, "What a good boy am I!" But in the hope that the repeated process of looking into the other person helps us really see (them and ourselves), respond accordingly and thus evolve.

If we do nothing, most assuredly nothing will change.

I would love to hear your stories, comments, opinions. As always, try to be specific and, most importantly, KIND.

Kindness According to Hits and Misses

A Google search of "kindness quotes" yields more than 7.5 million results. Only a few are true "hits" because they illuminate the concept of kindness in a new or different way. 

Others seem like true hits at first, but then register as "misses" when you think them through. My hope is that as we circle round and round the idea of kindness in the coming weeks, what it truly is and is not will begin to emerge. 

With that in mind, here are the "hits" and "misses" of my Google search to date...

HIT: 

I like that Twain describes kindness as a language, which tells me two things: 1.) It can be learned, and 2.) it has its roots in instinctual behavior and could once again become something we learn so well that its practice is automatic. We know that people who lose one sense--perhaps vision or hearing--experience a strengthening of other senses. Also, the portion of the human brain used to produce language is, in other animals, given over to instinctual processes. That’s not to say we don’t have any instincts since we developed language. We do, but they aren’t as sharply honed as in other animals because our brains are busy doing other stuff, like writing blogs and performing brain surgery.

Which brings me to another

HIT:

We can, of course, learn to tune into our instincts better and use that knowledge that comes up through our bodily sensations to inform our behavior, including our language-based responses. Though don’t expect your fellow humans to let you get away with behavior you’d tolerate in your cat (like tearing a mouse up for dinner). 

MISS:

While this is true, it doesn't go far enough. It assumes kindness is just for us homo sapiens, who are often the unkindest members of the animal kingdom, to each other and to other animals. Other animals do seem to have a natural instinct toward kindness when it's required. Reference all the stories of one breed of animal caring for another's babies, and revisit the photo above of the little dog on the horse's back as it swims to safety. These behaviors are a sort of instinctual kindness, and my guess is the animals don't think twice about it, which is proof in my book that they deserve at least as much kindness from us humans as we would show each other; actually, more. Reference all those other stories about serial killers who started out killing neighborhood pets.

That brings me to one that’s

HIT & MISS: 

When I saw the attribution on this one, it made me laugh. Like Capone, I don’t think we should let ourselves be doormats. I'm not very good at the doormat thing, though I don't maintain a squad of thugs to take out anyone who crosses me (but it's an interesting thought, wink-wink). There are socially acceptable, legal, and even KIND ways of making a stand, though we don't always sort them out in time to put them to use. At least I don't. 

I think the answer lies somewhere along the lines laid out in the Bible's book of Proverbs, chapter 15: “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger...The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but the perverse tongue crushes the spirit.” People learn what they experience, and life has already versed me well in the language of the harsh word and the perverse tongue. I’m still working on the soothing language that is a tree of life. I tend to be direct. Sometimes that comes across as abrupt. Sometimes it IS abrupt.

Like I said, I'm working on it, so I see in what Capone says a classic human dilemma. To use tree of life language AND not get trampled by others is really tough, but it’s where the rubber of kindness meets the road of life. Maybe I'm an idealist, but I do believe both are simultaneous possibilities, which is why my focus on kindness this year. I know I want to do both, to find that middle pathway of seasoned response. Such concentration and consciousness it will take though!

And finally, another

MISS:

I personally like this one because I love the beauty of snow and winter; I just don't think anybody experiencing winter in the Midwest U.S. this year will buy it. And to be honest, I think the metaphor fails because kindness isn't cold and it can't be a mere cover; it's something that has to go the whole way through, if you get my drift (yes, I love puns!).

I have more "hits & misses," but that's probably enough for this post.

If you have stories about times you’ve straddled this great divide successfully or fallen by one or the other wayside, please have the courage to share in the comments section and help us all grow. If you don't agree, please feel free to voice your opinion. But explain WHY and be kind, okay?

Kindness: My Word for 2014

Prompted by Facebook posts of some friends from student days, I decided to choose a word to take into my heart in a new way this year. One of them chose thankful, another chose explore, while a third picked liberality--all good words, all rich concepts.

I chose kindness.

I chose it because sometimes I have trouble feeling it and living it, and yet I believe it has the potential to solve a great many of the world's ills. That is, if we come to understand what it really is. Because I believe it's more than common courtesy and good manners, though both of those are lacking in our world and could go a long way toward improving things. Perhaps manners are a cousin of kindness, but what I'm searching for is a path of response that changes outcomes, without being dishonest or faked or a kind of candymaking, that registers as kindness.

So please join me in the coming months as I catalog, ponder, collect and wonder over kindness. I hope to write also about other topics on my blog this year, but I will mark all the kindness posts with the word magnet photo at right and compile them in a special post link on the sidebar.

That way you can take a single dose of kindness or a mega-dose, depending on what you feel you need at any particular time in your life. Some of the posts may be orderly and well-thought-out, while others may be chaotic and random (just thought I'd warn you).

So stay tuned and send me (email, Facebook message or use the comment form here) your thoughts and stories, any quotes you come across about kindness, any suggested readings that further illuminate the concept. I leave you with this one that started it all--a poem, of course. A good friend left this for me to find on my coffee table one day after writing group. Or maybe it was tucked in her notebook and simply fell out. Either way, it was an unexpected experience of kindness that will always stay with me, so thank you, Sandra Gutridge Harris...

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

Writers pull from the grab bag Memory

The ancient Greeks had it right when they personified memory, in the form of the goddess Mnemosyne, as the mother of the muses--those mythical beings who whisper inspiration into the ears of writers, visual artists and performing artists. Creativity is certainly Memory's child.

When experienced writers tell aspiring ones, Write what you know, they don't necessarily mean that what we write should be literal or fact-based. They mean for us to dip into the grab bag full of experiences each of us has lived. They mean memories wait there for us to pull out onto a page in some new way. They mean that no memory should be thought unworthy of use if it helps us say what we need to say. 

In my garden is a stone I bought at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D. C. It has the word Remember cut into its speckled surface. Its message, to me anyway, is that remembering serves us well whether the memories are good or bad or just there, with no judgment attached, because each of us sees and experiences something uniquely. No two people have the exact same experience, and no two people write about similar experiences in the same way.

I brought this rock inside last Saturday before my writers arrived and cleaned the cobwebs and dirt from it. Then we passed it around as a sort of cool talisman on a hot day as we each read a stanza of the poem In the Lebanese Mountains by Nadia Tueni. We talked a bit about the poem--how Tueni's use of sensory language and unexpected imagery made us feel as if we, too, were in the faraway place she described. The prompt I then gave them was to evoke a place they knew from memory, and whether they wrote it in the form of poetry or prose, to repeat the word remember, as Tueni does.

No surprise that each writer came up with something completely different. Here's what I wrote...

Remembering Young
by Susan Lawson

Remember the dance of daylight savings time?
     No school
          Staying up long after
               the sun went to bed

Catching fireflies in mayonnaise jars
     Holes dads punched with screwdrivers
          into screw-top lids
               Bits of grass added

to ease our consciences until tomorrow
     Thinking we could keep
          the moment alive
              if we ran fast enough.

Remember the gaggle of parents watching from the patio?
     Cigarettes in one hand
          Scotch in the other
               The clink of ice in crystal glasses

The silvery smoke trail that curled into the darkness
     on wrinkles of laughter
          Tips of gentle embers
               we could spot

from the vacant lot next door, summer’s homing beacon.
     Remember them
          always on guard,
               or pretending to be?

They found safety in numbers, just like us.
     How we knew a hush meant
          not for little ears 
               How we hid in the lilac bushes

to hear the dirty joke we wouldn’t understand and
     were overcome
          by scent.
               Remember them

perched in those folding aluminum lawn chairs?
     Plastic webs that
          stretched and frayed
               and then collapsed.

Remember dirty bare feet against starched white sheets?
     Parents who seemed so old then, and now
          I am older still
               remembering us young.

Here is Tueni's poem as it appears in the anthology This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye:

In the Lebanese Mountains
by Nadia Tueni (translated by Samuel Hazo)

Remember—the noise of moonlight
when the summer night collides with a peak
and traps the wind
in the rocky caves of the mountains of Lebanon.

Remember—a town on a sheer cliff
set like a tear on the rim of an eyelid;
one discovers there a pomegranate tree
and rivers more sonorous
than a piano.

Remember—the grapevine under the fig tree,
the cracked oak that September waters,
fountains and muleteers,
the sun dissolving in the river currents.

Remember—basil and apple tree,
mulberry syrup and almond groves.
Each girl was a swallow then
whose eyes moved like a gondola
swung from a hazel branch.

Remember—the hermit and goatherd,
paths that rise to the edge of a cloud,
the chant of Islam, crusaders’ castles,
and wild bells ringing through July.

Remember—each one, everyone,
storyteller, prophet and bakers,
the words of the feast and the words of the storm,
the sea shining like a medal in the landscape.

Remember—the child’s recollection
of a secret kingdom just our age.
We did not know how to read the omens
in those dead birds in the bottoms of their cages,
in the mountains of Lebanon.

Sympathetic Magic & Me

Call this an extended prose poem...

Sympathetic magic is when I wear long, crazy earrings and hope it reminds me to listen better--not merely when people other than me speak, but also when they are silent. What does their silence mean? What does the earth say when people are quiet enough to hear it?

Sympathetic magic is when I collect flowers and seedheads and leaves of plants and paste them in my journal to remind myself to germinate, grow, open, unfold, bloom, conceive, set seed, and die in some way to make room for something new.

Sympathetic magic is when I pick up broken bits of glass or pottery from a ditch, gum wrappers, bottle caps and bird feathers to remind myself that everything is useful and has its moment of meaning and beauty; to remind myself that we're not meant to become attached to "things" in this world. That when we lose a feather, for instance, like a bird, it's to grow a new one, stronger than ever.

Sympathetic magic is when I look for a cocoon near the place I saw the catepillar yesterday to remind me that nothing does--or should--stay the same, that the core of life is transforming ourselves into the form intended for us.

Sympathetic magic is when I garden to remind myself that I have to dig deeper to find some truths and not all "plants" are meant for my "soil" and "climate." And just because I don't have everything I want, there is plenty of beauty to go around in any place or circumstance if I'm willing to take chances and invest in what I can't yet see.

Sympathetic magic is saving nail clippings and hair my brush pulls out to mix into the soil when I plant or weed because it demonstrates the importance of giving something back when I take and treading lightly because all parts of nature depend on the others.

Happy Friday, happy weekend!

When Writers Write Together

by Susan Lawson

As writers write together in my house

clouds gather outside
and close the door on the sun
so our shadows can play
unseen.

After the writers leave my house
rain pelts
     down in
          torrents and
gives the grass back its breath
gives the flowers back their sighing
gives the sky over to its
long       sought-after      release
then washes the road
each writer
travels home.


These words came to me this morning as I looked out the window over my desk onto another gray and rainy day. But instead of it depressing me, I thought about how fresh and green everything looked now that we'd experienced a few consecutive days of rain after more than a week of hot and dry days. 

The lady's mantle I planted in the spring displays a shimmer of droplets in its cape-like leaves. A spider web that spans the space between a large rock and a cat statue, beneath which one of my kitties is buried, now supports a blanket of glistening raindrops. The cup of a geode half collects water like a miniature birdbath, and a male goldfinch drinks from it.

This time the dry spell broke on Saturday morning, shortly after my writing group broke up around noon. My writers had just enough time to make it to their cars and start home before the rain let loose in a riotous downpour. A couple sent me emails later, noting that the storm went with them, whether they traveled north or south.

I have regular writers in this group who come most every week. I have others who pop in and out about once a month or so. And then there are all the other writers--you perhaps--who I've encountered in the years I've taught who never come to a group at all, now that they aren't made free by the library. I worry about them. I wonder what keeps them going. I think that's where this poem comes from.

Something happens when we gather together and write. Whatever this something is, it gets better the longer we do it and the more we get to know the other writers in our group and their voices. We learn from each other. Not only techniques to try in our own poems or stories or essays, but how to live braver and truer, how to not be so hard on ourselves, how to see beauty wherever we find ourselves, how to listen and bear witness, and perhaps most importantly, how to play and have fun.

I write more on my own when I write regularly in a group. I also write better. I find more stories to tell. I hear more poetry in my everyday life. I can't put a price on this, though in my group I charge a fee for others to attend and spend this time with me. 

Believe me, what I charge doesn't even begin to offset my addictions to office supplies and books! But it does convey the message that to live the writing life will cost us something. There will be other things and people we must learn to say no to if we are to say yes to our writing. Mostly it's difficult to say yes with how we spend our time. Sometimes investing our money in the direction we want our time to go moves us down the right road.

If you'd like to write in a group, details about my Saturday group can be found here and here. If Saturday mornings don't work for you, let me know what would in the comments section (your personal information will not appear). If I can get enough people interested in meeting another day, I'll start a second group! Or, consider individual coaching; it's a little pricier but more in-depth. Details for that are here.

And if none of these suggestions are options for you right now, paper, pens and pencils comes in all price ranges, and the library carries lots of books on writing. Listed below are some of my favorites. So stock up, and don't forget your umbrella!

 

Lessons of the Garden

"Cease looking for flowers. 
There blooms a garden in your own home." 
- Rumi

The prompt at my Saturday morning group June 22 was a poem called "The Lesson of Texas" by Cheryl Parsons Darnell, anthologized in a book called Wounded Healers (Rachel Naomi Remen, editor, Wounded Healers Press, 1994).*

We had just talked about various kinds of imagery--simile, metaphor, extended metaphor, personification and allusion. I used the poem as an example of extended metaphor, and we talked about its multiple layers of meaning.

I asked my group of writers to pen their own poem, story or essay on "The Lesson of ____," filling in the blank with whatever they chose and writing something that had more than one layer of meaning. I also asked them to use repetition of at least one phrase or sentence throughout their piece. Darnell repeats "do not surprise you" and "I grew up in Texas."

Here is what I wrote:

The Lesson of the Garden
by Susan Lawson

A girl’s got to be half-
way through her life
to call herself a gardener
and mean it.

She’s got to be halfway
through her life
to give herself the go-ahead
to dig in the earth and know
her own dirt for its true nature—
sand’s grit or clay’s muck,
so much rock up top
the plants cook
or so much rock below
the roots give up because
they can’t push through.

A girl’s got to be halfway through
her life before she learns
how to turn what she’s stuck with
into the fluffy crumbs called loam.
She’s got to be ready to make
a lot of mistakes before
anything
worthwhile
comes together
because that’s how gardeners learn.
She’s got to resign herself to watching
innocents planted in the wrong place die
while interlopers over-run
an unsuspecting lawn.

A girl’s got to be halfway through her life
to recognize a good tool when she sees it—
the spade with the hardwood back
and relentless bite, the deep-brimmed hat that
shades her face, the clippers that make
short work of the thickest brush. She’s
got to be halfway through her life to respect
the contributions of all creatures—
worms for their composting,
ants for their fearlessness,
birds for their willingness to sing
while spreading seed—because,
let’s face it, she's going to hose off
a lot of bird and bug shit in her time.

So much so

she needs to

keep her eyes on

the prize of

cool water
on bare toes
at a hot day’s
end and
the righteous
slap of
wet soles
on concrete.

I said
to call herself a gardener
she’d have to mean it.

A girl’s got to be halfway through her life
before she learns
not to get in the way of
what nature sets in motion
for reasons all its own—
the raccoon who empties a duck nest
of its eggs, the drake who seems
to stalk and rape his mate,
the bony mallard wing cast off
by a hawk who’s had his fill.
She’s got to be halfway through her life
before she sees past ugliness
all the way to beauty.

I’ve heard people say that
life began in a garden and then—
like some kind of calamity came along
in the shape of a girl and spoiled
it all. But I am a girl half-
way through my life and I say
Look around and I mean it:
We make a garden 

wherever we be.

* Thanks to Amy Lyles Wilson for sharing this prompt with me.