"Three things are important in human life. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." -- Henry James
Kindness makes me cry. When I see someone helping someone else out or hear a news story about the kindness of people who take in people caught in an emergency or the thousand other kindnesses that take place in any given day, I'm touched in a way that's different than anything else. It brings tears to my eyes.
I've asked myself why. I think I'm responding to our deep need to touch one another. To give, rather than receive. Kindness is the deepest expression of our desire for community; nothing draws two people together in the way that kindness does. I think there must be a very ancient need in us to help someone who needs it. You can call it our altruism gene but I prefer kindness.
Some kindnesses are anonymous. To give and not need acknowledgement, or want it, or to be in trouble yourself and still be kind to another, is selflessness of a very high order. In Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning," he gives an account of his time in a concentration camp. At one point, he writes that only those prisoners could keep alive who had lost all scruples in the fight for existence. They were prepared to steal, betray friends, use force, even be brutal to save themselves. "We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one may choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not come back."
Isolation is one of my default settings. I distinguish between that and solitude - solitude is the alone time everyone needs - to reflect, create, calm down. My isolation is of another order - it's the thing that makes it hard for me to get out the door or initiate plans with people and stay in touch with them even when I want to. It's what keeps me invisible - lets me be invisible. It's a feeling that descends on me as soon as I turn away from people, away from the world.
There's no point outlining the anatomy of my urge, need, compulsion to isolate. I know enough about it; I want to know how to change. Powerlessness is one way in. Not the kind of powerlessness that's an admission of defeat, or enslavement or in fact anything negative. My admission of powerlessness is an opening. It allows me to take my white-knuckled hands off the frantic need to figure things out and change myself in an instant. There is no kindness to myself in that and it doesn't help in any case. Change doesn't come when the knives are out.
The powerlessness I mean creates a enough space so that I can take a deep breath and relax into the moment, this moment. Willfulness, the endless jockeying of my mind looking for a sense of control - all that dissolves and I feel myself expand. That's where the kindness is, the compassion. Without the calm that comes when I allow myself to feel that kindness, there's no chance at all that anything will change.
