A Kindess Poem to Start Your Weekend

One of the techniques I want to use for circumabulating this idea of kindness is writing poems. I teach creative writing workshops and so have a storehouse of "techniques" for helping the conscious mind jump past the obvious. One of those is magnetic poetry--a technique that often helps me find relationships and ideas that would never occur to me using a more linear writing approach.

I've collected A LOT of word magnets through the years, and I keep them organized in muffin tins by initial letters. Often as a warm-up exercise in my own, personal writing time, I choose a letter to start with, scoop out a handful of words and search through the pile for words that strike me. This gives me the advantage of alliteration up front, and I build my poem around it.

With this series on kindness, I want to go through the alphabet eventually (though Q and V may give me problems when I get there!), so today I pulled out words beginning with A. Here's what I came up with:

At Peniel

Jacob Wrestling the Angel of God
by Jacob Baumgartner

by Susan Lawson

Dark angel or animal?
Kindness, like all things, is always both.

Ask ask ask and the answer
always comes back ache.

Picture a wing limp from struggle.
Feel the shoulder dis-

locate, the hope for flight
flee. Hear weary I am

so weary

as the only prayer.

Only when all fight is gone
will the animal dare draw near.

Almost it whispers
Almost another, almost a way.

Fog settling into frost
makes a restless bed yet

a whole race depends on
a dream of two brothers.

See one limp toward the other.
See the other receive him.

Dark angel or animal?
Which is whom?

Kindness like all things
is always both.


Something to ponder over the weekend...Happy Friday!

Where does kindness come from?

I’m taking a break today from the “hit-and-miss” format to explore where kindness comes from, that is, its etymology. No, I promise this is not leading to a discussion of insects; that’s entomology (what a difference two letters can make!). Etymology is the study of the history of words, their derivations, where they came from and how they changed.

Most dictionaries contain hints of a word's history, but etymological dictionaries provide more detailed information. These, of course, vary in quality, too. I have a disintegrating copy of Chambers Dictionary of Etymology in my home library because it is relatively thorough, condensed (only 1,254 pages) and affordable, compared to the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which is hands-down the most exhaustive source. Most library reference sections stock either the encyclopedic set or the "compact," two-volume version that comes with a magnifying glass. Some libraries may offer an online version to cardholders, which can also be purchased for use on an individual computer.

As well as being a word buff, I am also a psychology buff, and those two interests intersect in the writings of the late Jungian psychiatrist Edward Edinger (a native Hoosier, I might add). His idea that a word’s etymology was its “unconscious” side is the only “bug” I want to put in your ear. Like digging up and learning about our own unconscious thoughts and desires, as well as the collective unconscious of the universe, knowing the derivation of a word can more deeply inform us about its true meaning and intention.

Yes, words have intention, because words have life. Why do you think writers write? Because their words, which may fall into stillness or silence at some point, come to life again and move when another reads or speaks them, and life is nothing if not motion. This is what it means when we speak of writing as making an author immortal.

In English, whenever one adds -ness to the end of the word, a more concrete descriptive word gets turned into not only a noun (person, place or thing) but also an abstraction. To explore the root of the concept and thus turn the idea back into something we can experience with our senses, we need to slice off the suffix and look at the history of the root, in this case the word kind.

Without going back in history at all, kind is already a word in present-day German that hints at its derivation. Pronounced with a short rather than a long "i" sound, it is the German word for “child.” This is probably most familiar to us in the word kindergarten, which made its way into English straight from the German in the 1800s when the idea of a preschool class that resembled a "child’s garden" (the literal translation) developed.

That kind still means “child” in German tells us that our present-day concept of kindness is related somehow to qualities present in a child. Now you don’t have to be a parent to know that while children are quite natural and innocent beings mostly, instinctive until the world of adults teaches them to be otherwise, and often charming, they can also be tyrants. So we don’t want to rest too much of our argument on that relationship; just keep it in mind. I think it’s reasonable to conclude that kindness is meant to be natural and instinctive--that is, done with purity of motives and not calculated--and maybe even playful and done with the eagerness of a child undertaking a new adventure.

The German word for child, as well as the derivation of kindness, both go back to words in various languages related to kin, meaning family or tribe. It seems that to be kind to someone initially meant to have the same feelings toward them as toward a family member. The idea grew out of the original meaning of kind as “sort,” “class,” “race” or “variety.” Kindred—literally, relatives who advise or can read us—has the same history.

Of course I know families don’t always treat each other well. But even dysfunctional families (which in all honesty would be all of them, at least in some way) display characteristics of hanging together in more reliable (though not always helpful) ways than other groups in society. As a parent, it’s hard for me to imagine my daughter doing something I couldn’t forgive her for eventually; no matter what, she could always turn to me, she could always come home. 

Some families carry this a bit further: Consider those parents who help their children flee the law when they're suspected of a crime. When I taught high school I witnessed parents who stood up for their children in appropriate and inappropriate ways; one told me the B grade I gave her son must have been my mistake because he was an A student! We only have to look back at the Romans and their ideas and practices within tribes to know the more things change, the more they stay the same. However, in my own family of origin, my parents were there to support me and protect me; but if I did something wrong, they made sure I owned up to it, took my (fair) punishment and did what I could to make amends.

So what does all this "psychology" tell us about the real life of kindness? Definitely that it’s reliable and durable. But beyond that, perhaps that it wants a positive outcome for the recipient, even if that’s uncomfortable in the short term. Kindness, I think, focuses on the long haul. In modern-day lingo, it keeps its eye on the prize.

Also crossing the kind path in its etymology is the word kindle, whose origins are not as clear but may be related and, at least, seem so to me. Kindle originally was a noun and meant a candle or a torch—it is Scandinavian—but today we use it in English as a verb meaning “to light or set afire.” The noun form we use today, kindling, refers instead to the material we use to start a fire—rags, paper, sticks put in contact with a spark.

Whether or not etymology intends it, I think kindle and kindling are related to kindness. The standing by others we do, as if they were family, is a sort of torch, or sign, of what it is to be not merely human, but humane. It lights the way! Small acts of kindness are the rags, paper and sticks that get the blaze going. We may never know all who found warmth at the fire we kindled anymore than we always know the ramifications of the hurt we cause. For just as a fire warms, it also burns and consumes. The fire of kindness can get out of hand when motives are less than pure, less than instinctual, more contrived, more drawn from grand intentions, left untended, overfed.

In closing, please understand I don’t pretend to know anymore about kindness (or anything else) than any of you. I am searching, and etymology is one place I always look--a favorite stone I like to turn over, if you will; this post is what I think I found underneath about kindness. All my posts on kindness represent what Edinger and his predecessor Carl Jung would call "circumambulation," which, psychologically speaking, bears some relation to the folkloric tradition of drawing a magic circle. By going around and around a subject, we come closer to understanding it, and that knowledge acts as a sort of protection, insofar as it increases consciousness.

But what do you think? Did I go too far or in the wrong direction? Your comments, stories and opinions are always welcome in the comments section, as long as you, too, remember to be kind.

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!