July | 2016 | A Year of Living Kindly

Summer Visitor at Storm Lake

I have opened and closed nearly every blog post with quotes about kindness. For those of you who love or collect quotations, as I do, you can always access them on my Resource page. One of my favorite kindness quotes is just a bit too long to lead off a blog post, so I thought I’d make the quote today’s post. These wise words by Ralph Marston are ones I read and ponder frequently. They seem especially apt during this long summer of our discontent. I hope they touch you, as well.

Though it may seem that your kindness is not always appreciated, it does indeed have an impact every time. The less it seems to be appreciated, the more it is needed, and the more of a positive difference it can make.

Kindness is not something that becomes depleted when it is used. The more true, unconditional kindness you offer, the more you will have to offer, and the more there will be for everyone.

Genuine kindness is not an act of weakness or capitulation, but rather a powerful demonstration of confidence in your purpose. Not at all naïve or unrealistic, kindness is a sign of true strength and real sophistication.

Kindness does not mean allowing others to take advantage of you or of anyone else. Kindness means doing what you know is right and creating real, substantial, lasting value for those around you.

Live and act with kindness, and the value of each action is multiplied many, many times over. Live with kindness and you live with the power to make a difference in every life you touch.

~Ralph Marston

This I believe with all my heart: Kindness will win…

“I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little kindness can go.” (Rachel Joy Scott [1981-1999], student, first victim of the Columbine High School massacre)

Even to me, kindness sometimes seems puny and powerless against the relentless bigotry, hatred, and anger that surround us. I believe with my whole heart that kindness will eventually triumph, but even with my whole heart thus convinced, I feel it shatter after so many senseless deaths—those of the last week and the cumulative violence here in America and worldwide.

It’s making some of us numb, while at the same time arousing even more anger in others. We have become vastly polarized—politics, ideology, culture, race, religion. The diversity that makes us so robust, so richly varied, and, yes, so strong, is also our Achilles’ heel. Where. Will. It. End?

This week, Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and renowned civil rights leader, said, “It doesn’t matter whether black or white, Latino, Asian-American or Native American; we are one family living in one house. We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters. If not, we will perish as fools. We have too many guns. There has been too much violence. And we must act.”

“Perish as fools.” Is that to be our fate? Sometimes it feels like it.

Fear is at the heart of so much of this violence: fear of people who look different or think differently, fear of losing what one has or of never having what one wants, fear of being disrespected, fear of being wrong, fear of appearing weak. What would happen if we could put aside our fears?

Each horrific act we’ve witnessed has incited more hatred and violence, but each has also spurred countless acts of kindness. We must multiply those kindnesses, we must share them and savor them. When I become discouraged, and when puny kindness seems no match for ever-growing anger and hate, I will remember the courage of people who stand up to aggression and violence armed only with kindness, and I will try to emulate them. We must always remember them…lest we perish as fools.