Many of us experience ourselves as fragmented, perhaps as confident and expressive when we are with our families but a completely different person when we are at work, frequently hesitant and unsure. Perhaps we take risks when we are with others but are timid when alone, or are cozily comfortable when alone yet are painfully shy and withdrawn when with others. Or maybe we drift along with the tides of circumstance, going up and down, not knowing what we might really care about more than anything else, but thinking there must be something. 

To explore kindness as that thread of meaning requires finding out if we can be strong and still be kind, be smart and still be kind, whether we can be profoundly kind to ourselves and at the same time strongly dedicated to kindness for those around us. We have to find the power in kindness, the confidence in kindness, the release in kindness; the type of kindness that transcends belief systems, allegiances, ideologies, cliques, and tribes. This is the trait that can transform our lives.

Kindness is the fuel that helps us truly “walk our talk” of love, a quality so easy to speak about or extol but often so hard to make real. It helps us to genuinely care for one another and for ourselves as well. Kindness is the foundation of unselfconscious generosity, natural inclusivity, and an unfeigned integrity. When we are devoted to the development of kindness, it becomes our ready response, so that reacting from compassion, from caring, is not a question of giving ourselves a lecture: “I don’t really feel like it, but I’d better be helpful, or what would people think.” When we are devoted to the development of kindness, we are no longer forcing ourselves into a mold we think we have to occupy; rather, it becomes a movement of the heart so deep and subtle that it is like a movement of the sea close to the ocean floor, all but hidden yet affecting absolutely everything that happens above. That’s the force of kindness.

The quality of kindness gives us the ability to take abstract ideals like compassion, or “love thy neighbor,” and make them authentic and palpable and vibrant each and every day, going to work or going to school or going home, or getting through a situation we would never in a million years have chosen. When we really examine kindness we find it is a deep and abiding understanding of how connected we all are. We see that kindness inspires a sense of ethics independent of any religious adherence, which can guide our families, communities, and the world we live in towards realizing greater safety and peace. I think this spirit underlies one of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s most famous quotations: “My true religion is kindness.”

In 1997, while attending a conference in San Francisco called “Peacemaking: The Power of Nonviolence,” I walked by the writer Alice Walker, who was having an informal conversation with a group of people. I overheard her say, “As I get older, I realize that the thing I value the most is good-heartedness.” Intrigued, I reflected for some time on that statement. I thought of how we struggle and strive in life, of our craving for acquisitions and attainments and possessions and praise and glory. Then I thought of what in fact uplifts us when we are feeling down no matter how much we own, of what gives us a boost when it is so easy to feel weak or inferior because we are in mental or physical pain. I thought of what unites us when we could, instead, feel isolated, hurting because of some difference that we think sets us intractably apart, or one that others deliberately use to marginalize us, to diminish us. And I too found myself again and again coming back to good-heartedness, to the giving and receiving of kindness. 

From birth, and in fact well before, we are dependent on someone’s kindness. An infant who is being severely deprived of basic emotional sustenance, even though physically well cared for, can fail to thrive and can eventually die. We need affection, nurturing, and attention, not just to embellish our life or to have a somewhat better day, but for our actual survival. And in the absence of receiving this kindness, something in us does die, at least for a while, unless and until it can be restored through love. 

When the adult daughter of a friend of mine had a child after several years of hoping and trying and had tended to the baby at home for about two weeks, she turned to her mother and said, “You did this for me!” The intensity of kindness needed to consistently put a child’s needs in place of one’s own desires can probably be weighed by how many people feel terribly scarred by their childhoods … yet day in and day out, parents and caretakers wake up in the middle of the night or kiss boo-boos or play with Legos endlessly or read Goodnight Moon for the millionth time. A friend of mine, a very successful lawyer, an admired public servant, touched upon the awesome quality of this relationship when she, without a moment’s hesitation, referred to raising her son as, “The most important thing I will ever do in life.” 

Kindness points to the core of what it means to be alive, which is to be connected. When someone looks at us with the concern of kindness, the sense of connection expressed in their eyes reflects our own value. When someone treats us with the benevolence of kindness, the sense of connection informing their actions confirms our own right to be happy. And when someone feels connected enough to reach out to us in kindness, we hear the unspoken message of their efforts—that we are worth the bother. 

One of the ways kindness affects us is through the development of “self-efficacy,” a contemporary psychological concept that describes a certain kind of faith in ourselves, in our ability to meet difficulties. This quality influences our willingness to take risks, to face new challenges. Albert Bandura, a Stanford psychologist who has done much of the research on self-efficacy, says this, “People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property … there is huge variability in it; people who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failures; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.”

This is the difference between pain and hopelessness, between distress and bitterness, between suffering and despair—sorrows or difficulties arise, yet we have some sense of confidence that we can find a way to work through them. What I found compelling about Dr. Bandura’s quotation is the understanding that a person’s belief about his or her own abilities has such a strong impact. If ability is not a preordained, limited commodity, then our potential to grow, to understand, to love, to connect is significantly nourished by what we believe about ourselves. This is one of the great fruits of the kindness we receive from others—it supports our sense of being someone deserving of love, someone who can in turn accomplish something, who can vanquish difficulties, who can make it through the travails of life, who can be a good person. 

______________________

Reprinted from The Force of Kindness by Sharon Salzberg (Sounds True, 2005)