How to Make Kindness a Habit

In Book II of Rhetoric, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defines kindness as “helpfulness towards someone in need, not in return for anything, nor for the advantage of the helper himself, but for that of the person helped.” He goes on to delineate three specific actions one can take to behave kindly:

1. Aid people in crisis or distress.
2. Assist those with less access to power and resources than you have.
3. Be the first, or even the only person, to help.

This definition is important for putting P!nk’s 2019 declaration—that “Kindness today is an act of rebellion”—into context. Indeed, it was this excerpt from the 21st century pop icon’s acceptance speech for her E! People’s Champion Award, that inspired the first draft of this essay, which was written in “The Before Times” of December 2019. Her statement resonated then, and it still does, because kindness is a core tenet of my life philosophy and a quality I learned from my grandfather. In her speech, P!nk referenced a sizeable list of notable world changers, including Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Malala Yousefzai, and Greta Thunberg. She also implored her fans and viewers to “Stop fighting each other and help each other.”

Remember Brotherly Love 

In his seminal work The Art of Loving, the Jewish-German philosopher Erich Fromm states that “The most fundamental kind of love that underlies all types of love, is brotherly love. By this I mean the sense of responsibility, care, respect, knowledge of any other human being, the wish to further his life... Brotherly love is love for all human beings; it is characterized by its very lack of exclusiveness.” While this 20th century definition of platonic love may sound anachronistic, I posit that brotherly love represents the single category of action most likely to save America from itself.

As I revised this essay on January 6, 2022, one year after the horrific events at the U.S. Capitol, I was reminded of historian Jon Meacham’s words to Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway on their podcast Pivot: “To me, this increasingly feels as though we’re living in 1850s America.” Meacham’s statement is truncated on purpose, because—to quote P!nk again—"I don’t care about your politics. I care about your kids. I care about decency and humanity and kindness.” I refer to Meacham’s statement here, because I agree that America is regressing.

For now, I aim simply to embrace another anachronism, specifically, the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew, 7:12 of the Holy Bible. (Please, agnostic and atheist friends, bear with me.) “Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: For this is the law...” Regardless of where your religious beliefs fall on the spectrum of devout to devoid, you are likely familiar with The Golden Rule. Applying it reaps rewards for both giver and receiver, so long as each knows also how to be kind to themselves. Hence, we must first create conditions where kindness can thrive.

This raises the question: How do we create those conditions in an era of divisiveness?   

Ask a Group of Teenage Girls 

Surprise! It starts with children—yours, not mine, because I have none. As an English teacher I like to say, “Parents do all the hard work, while I get to enjoy teaching students the power of words and art.” Sometimes, though, the students teach me so much it blows my mind. That’s the example I want to share with you: How a gaggle of Freshman girls sowed such seeds of kindness that they stopped their teacher from walking out on the job without even knowing it.

Until 2018, I had lived most of this century outside of the Deep South, where I was born and graduated college. For about nine of those years, I was in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2019, I entered a classroom of my own for the first time since being physically assaulted 16 years earlier at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in the South Bronx. Other than the profound level of daily violence, I loved everything about that job. My administration and colleagues were so supportive that I almost certainly wear rose-colored glasses when reflecting on my time living and working in “The Boogie Down.”       

Thus, I was caught completely off guard three months into my new job when a statement I made in Advanced Placement (AP) Research, which is meant to be an undergraduate college-level course, was turned against me with vitriol the likes of which I have never experienced in any school, anywhere. My offending statement, which was made in passing during a discussion of scientific hypotheses, was this: “We all know the world was not created in 7 days.” For that scientifically accurate statement (except for the “all”) I was accused of shaming students for their religious beliefs, and behaving as though I was intellectually superior to them. My boss (the principal) told me that statement was my opinion and, as an authority figure in the classroom, I was not to state my opinion as fact. Moreover, I was never able to engage in dialogue with the student(s) and parent who made the allegations, because my principal kept their names secret, rather than holding a parent-teacher conference. Such meetings are the norm in this type of situation. Fortunately, that brand of administrator is not this essay’s subject.

What matters are the teenage girls who somehow sensed their fish-out-of-California-waters teacher was feeling like a Largemouth Bass on the fillet table. At a moment when I felt ostracized by my principal and half of a six-member faculty, these 14-and-15-year-old beacons showered me with the light and power of loving kindness. From hand-drawn bookmarks and a worn copy of Where the Crawdads Sing to a pencil box decorated with the city of San Francisco, they collaborated on an array of hand-made and inexpensive gifts that made me feel like a million bucks. Among those items was the most thoughtful gift I have ever received: A hand-painted jar stuffed with at least 100 small strips of paper, each with a hand-written compliment.
 
From that day forward, I felt protected by an invisible shield, a force-field of kindness forged by a dozen teenage girls who, thanks to the small-school grapevine, knew I was in distress; and who, instead of piling on like Mean Girls, turned the volume to 10 at “Lean on Me.” They were the first people to make me feel truly welcome in that academic environment.

The long-term results were even more surprising: Though I had the least amount of teaching experience, my students received the highest rate of qualifying AP scores that year. Without ever knowing it, these teenage girls invoked the words of Aristotle and P!nk, and turned my year of miserable mornings into one of joyful afternoons. That’s an important feature of kindness: it can travel far beyond its origins. Kindness creates a memory that shines light into cracks and crevices, when dark thoughts try to enter. Rather than committing random acts of it, I argue that it is time we make a habit of kindness towards others, whether we agree with them or not.

By Cheri Renee