Kindness - The Immeasurable Currency

Welcome to TribeLife Tuesday! We are so excited to have you here. 

Today, I invite you into my world. You set the scene - we can be drinking margaritas laying in our hammocks as the summer sun bathes us in her glory. Or we can be cozied up by the fire drinking lattes watching the snow softly fall and quickly pile up. 

Take a moment and picture it. 

...

Are you ready to embark on the word journey? 

Here we go!

I recently was out people-watching, because it’s simply the best, and observed masses of people going about their day. That was all they were doing: going about THEIR day, seemingly oblivious to the world around them. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good "zone out" day but the more I watched, the more I realized there was simply no awareness of one another. I thought to myself "if we only just knew what was going on in each of these peoples' lives we would probably be kinder with our actions. Probably with our words too.” 

Then I found myself pondering the concept of kindness: what is it really? What does it look like walked out everyday? Why is it important?

As a wannabe historian, I naturally start from the beginning, searching for great acts of kindness throughout history. These brave acts are all over - Robert Owen was a capitalist who transformed the city surrounding his mill. Zoltan Kubinyi was a Hungarian Nazi officer who helped rescue Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust. The group of Louisiana men and women who dropped everything, grabbed their boats, and drove over to Texas to help rescue people trapped in rising flood waters. There are hundreds of thousands of more stories like these out there. All because our nature is to help - we are made to be kind.

There are many inspirational quotes out there all about kindness, but what is it really? Kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Sounds easy enough, right? This is one of those main things in life. Keep this at the forefront of all you do, because it is reciprocal. And friends, this is a quality, something that is built and nurtured through practice, and each of us has the ability to build this stellar quality. Whether you’re not kind yet or you’re part-time kind, this is not out of reach for you. You only have to start practicing. 

So, how do I walk this out? Walking kindness out every day looks like slowing down and looking around. Finding a need and fulfilling it. Taking from my pile to give to another. Seemingly, the best stories come from the kind acts that are extended to those who need it the most - the destitute, the marginalized, the broken, the hurting: these people need our kindness. Then there are those who don’t appear to “need” our kindness but it is our duty, as contributors to all things good and beautiful in society, to extend it to them as well. It’s the paying for someone’s order in the drive-thru line or at the counter, it’s giving the person begging on the corner some change. As Aesop says, "no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.”

So why, why is it important? Kindness reminds us of how significantly insignificant we are. We all have role to play in society and being kind is part of it. While what happens in each of our individual worlds is very important, it is equally important to make sure we are contributing to the world around us. And may we never get so caught up in our world that we lose sight of others and their needs. 

My hope is that we stay awake to society, giving where we can and loving all over the rest of it. 

Remember, kindness is an immeasurable currency and it should spent lavishly. 

Thank you for reading. 

See you next Tuesday.