The Power of Kindness

I recently had occasion to ride a train from an airport to the city. While awaiting the train’s departure, a man entered the car, secured his bike to the wall rack and exited to swipe his pass on the outdoor kiosk. Without warning the train started to move. The man’s cries penetrated our car but not the conductor’s car. The train did not stop. I shared a shocked look with the other passengers as his voice faded and the consequences of being separated from his bike settled on our collective mind. At the first stop, a young man approached the bike, lifted it off the rack and said, “I have the time. I’m going to get this guy’s bike back to him.”

Kindness blunts unforeseen consequences.

My Texas born daughter with little winter driving experience tried to move her car from a snowy college parking lot under threat of towing. Unable to gain traction, her efforts to back up only slid the car closer to the one parked next to hers. In a panic-induced anxiety attack, she called. I recognized the hyperventilating through her sobs. My efforts to advise and calm over the phone did nothing. Suddenly she said, “I have to go” and disconnected. Multiple images, none of them good, flashed through my mind. Ten minutes later  she called back. A “dad” had knocked on her window and asked if he could help. She readily agreed. He re-parked her car and left.

Kindness calms fear and panic.

As a teen, I received an assignment to deliver a talk to my church congregation. I was nervous and self-conscious. After speaking, I continued to fret over the experience into the next week. In the midst of my self-doubts, I received a note from an elderly woman in the congregation. In shaky cursive she was effusive in her praise of my efforts and I was naïve enough to believe it. Her recognition changed how I felt about my ability to write and speak.  I saved her note for many years and often revisited her words as I faced other challenging opportunities.

Kindness can encourage and empower into the future.

Occasionally the reward for kindness comes immediately as when my young daughter switched her first class seat for a soldier’s coach seat and won the applause of the entire airplane. Other times the giver may never know. Feeling overwhelmed after a pain-filled visit to the infertility doctor, I opened a letter from my father–a simple expression of his love. But at that moment, it was a life line, rescuing me from discouragement and sadness.

Kindness is a step up from good manners and consideration. Holding a door or adding a please or thank you become automatic habits that occur with little thinking once acquired.

Kindness, on the other hand, is a choice. It is triggered by observing and then acting. In this way, it becomes a mirror that reflects our inward heart through our outward actions. The good news is that choosing kindness initiates a virtuous cycle. Our soul expands a little each time we act with kindness, which increases our compassion, which increases our desire to act with kindness. As water ripples outward from a stone dropped in a pond, so the effect of kindness changes both giver and receiver.

Kindness is unexpected. It is what we would want someone to do for us. It creates friends, repairs relationships and brings joy.

Though kindness may be temporarily displaced by angry rhetoric and actions, in the end it will always win. Kindness heals, restores, calms, encourages, and empowers. Kindness matters.

Are you searching for the least expensive, most effective way to boost your happiness and help someone else at the same time?

 Choose kindness.