Kindness

            A Buddhist friend and practitioner described to me the journey of kindness. She is starting to use the practice of helping or showing kindness to at least 2 people around her, including strangers or those who might not even be asking for help from others. Some of the reactions are ranging from "I don't need your help!" to the often unspoken "what's this for?" Sometimes, not responding to kindness reflects the latter, or even an uncertainty as to how to receive kindness. Does receiving kindness mean that one has to pay the other back? I also think the former situation is common in cases where people insist on doing things for themselves. To receive kindness might be a kind of weakness, according to these people. Modern Western cultures in particular seem to emphasize the value of self-reliance, but what would such a gesture have appeared in a more communal setting?
         Kindness is something that often feels and looks good on paper,but it takes risk, and it is not at all certain. The risk is about complexity. When I am kind to someone in a way I think is kind, will that person feel the same way about it? Chances are that acts of kindness are negotiated between people. For example, if a person is trying to be kind but ends up sacrificing her own needs or priorities, then I wonder if this is kind to either the giver or the recipient. Can too much availability to someone else sometimes create a loss of boundaries? Another question I had is what happens when people feel threatened by another's kindness. Kind acts have sometimes been known to smother, to affirm the giver more than the receiver, or to even, unwittingly, create or reinforce a power imbalance. Is kindness so simple as it appears?
     The recent self-help movements most likely coined the term 'random acts of kindness' to refer to the possibility that kindness comes with no complexity or strings. According to this movement, I randomly choose someone and generate a positive action for that person: smile at them, give them five dollars, compliment them, etc. Aside from my doubts as to whether it is truly random or not , I often wonder what it's like to be on the receiving end of that interchange. Much has been written about how great it feels to give these random acts,but not much has been written about receiving. I have the impression that someone who is the recipient of the random act of kindness would perhaps feel special, for a moment,... only to later find out that their giving friend just read a self-help book on random acts, and you are her guinea pig! And then the person would sigh and say, "oh, she is doing it for that reason. What was I thinking? That I was special? Silly me!"
     One challenge I see it, is that a random act of kindness isn't truly random at all. There is an element of deliberation about it, where the giver plans to give 'randomly' because they were told this was a good thing from a book, or maybe by a teacher. The interesting thing is that if the act of kindness were not random and were based on a consideration of the person and what her true needs might be, it seems that this might take it to a more personal and more heartfelt experience for both giver and receiver.
      While the principle of random kindness is great, I wonder if true kindness starts from a more basic 'feeling with' someone, which often doesn't happen in an instant. Kindness might begin not with a deliberate action, but by way of a conversation with a person, where we mutually inquire into the meaning of connection. Could this more subtle, open-ended kindness be a more valuable place to start? I think yes, but I am also inclined to think that it's not an instant best-seller, because this space means navigating complexity and ambiguity. It suggests that kindness is an intention that might not fully get translated into a clear or unequivocal act of benefit to someone else.