November 13 is World Kindness Day, and the whole week of November 13-19 is Kindness Week.  No doubt you’ve heard of “random acts of kindness,” such as paying for a stranger’s cup of coffee or leaving money for someone’s groceries in line behind you. Perhaps you’ve even performed some anonymous random kindnesses yourself.  Bless you. But who knew that a movement to make World Kindness Day an official observance every November 13 began back in 1998 with an international coalition of kindness NGOs (non-governmental organizations). I certainly didn’t. 

     The organization was first formalized in Swiss law and originally included Canada, Australia, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates; Singapore observed the Day for the first time in 2009, and Italy, India, and the United Kingdom soon followed.  Repeated appeals to the United Nations for recognition of a World Kindness Movement have been made, but so far nothing has been enacted. The movement’s original purpose was to highlight good deeds focusing on the community and the positive power of the common thread of kindness in humanity. Obviously, finding a “common thread” of any kind anywhere seems to be a challenge these days, especially here in America.

     There is no official recognition of World Kindness Day in the United States, though the whole kindness movement has spread to some extent throughout the world. Numerous programs have been developed for school children even in America, such as “Be Kind to People Projects” and “Cool to be Kind Awards.” There have been events such as “The Big Hug” in cities everywhere, and there was even a Global Dance for Kindness flashmob organized by an American in 2012 and held in 15 countries and 33 cities all over the world, images of which were projected onto the big screens in New York’s Times Square. (Visit www.lifevestinside.com for more information.)

     So, okay. Kindness counts. The cynic in me says, “Yeah,  right, and so…?” I’m not surprised that Kindness Day isn’t officially recognized in the US. I doubt if we could find any two politicians or government agencies to even agree on a definition of what kindness is, much less on how to celebrate it. In the current domestic climate of anger, violence, retribution, hatred, bullying, bigotry and anti-everything that pervades the US society, someone who really believes that a small random act of kindness (even a million of them), can somehow restore our divided people into a civil, reasonable, compassionate, tolerant unified nation that it once was, or was at least trying to be, is either not paying attention or, at worst, is totally delusional. 

     But back to the topic of kindness. I’ll admit that even I have some difficulty defining exactly what kindness is. Generally, I have always thought of kindness as basic etiquette, good manners: you hold the door for someone, give up your seat on a train for someone, let another vehicle into traffic ahead of you, say “please” or “thank you” or “excuse me” whenever you overstep or interrupt. You don’t intentionally offend, by language or action, anyone in either a public or a private space — which is rude — and you try, in general, to just be “nice”  and ignore any rudeness that comes your way. To me, kindness is simply restraint: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Let it go because after all, who cares about what people you don’t know think anyway?

     Curiously, though, that’s the rub. I find it easier to be kind to strangers and, if the truth be told, I think most of us do. The small everyday acts of polite behavior that we extend to people we don’t know, might never see again, and have no personal relationship with, are sort of automatic — if we’ve “been raised right.” Giving a guy money at a traffic intersection for a meal, donating money for relief funds, any charitable giving actually, whether anonymous or not, is a sort of kindness that costs us nothing personally except money, and demands nothing in return — except perhaps a tax deduction.

     The real kindness challenge is to be kind with those we love and know well and with whom we interact everyday: our parents and spouses, our siblings, our children and family members, our dearest friends, our closest colleagues.  In other words, these are the people whom we tend to take for granted, whom we assume know us so well that any off-hand comment, any personal transgression, will be understood and forgiven. Because we assume their love and good intentions, we often omit even the most basic goodwill gestures, the pleases and thank yous, the cards and notes, the “you first” response — all the common courtesies that we routinely afford others without even thinking about it.

     But today is a different time and a different era, and if you’ll forgive me for sounding like a snob, the “raised right” manners and etiquette of a civilized society seem to have skipped a generation or two. Rude, brutish behavior and violent, threatening language have been normalized by our politicians, our media influencers, our celebrities, and our corporate leaders, and these are the models of behavior our younger generations have to emulate. In a society where success is defined by money, power and material acquisition rather than on personal character and dignity, there is little to distinguish human beings from animals — except that animals act out only when threatened and never with premeditated malice.

     I taught speech and communication to college freshmen for a number of years, and part of that curriculum was listening skills: how to listen, really listen, to what the other person was saying without thinking about your own retorts. It’s a lesson I taught, but one that has been hard for me to master. I am very quick-witted, often with humor, but also very direct and sometimes sarcastic. But I don’t yell and I don’t curse; I know that language matters and words lead to actions. The more serious the conversation, the more important it is to remember that. So, for me, my greatest kindness challenge is to ask myself before speaking, “Do I really need to say this?” It takes a lot of restraint to tell myself no and simply shut up.

     As I’ve gotten older, the issues personally, nationally and globally have gotten more serious, but perversely, the ones that I care enough to talk about have become fewer and fewer. I’m just so tired of it all, the endless arguments, empty gestures and pious platitudes when there really is little left to say. So my motto for Kindness Day, once again taken from my favorite poet T.S. Eliot and his poem The Wasteland, is: “Teach us to care and not to care; Teach us to sit still.”