Practicing Kindness

This weekend at the main season opening of the Hickory Farmers Market, a dad bought an armful of irises from which his young children plucked stems one by one and ran around giving them to people—mostly strangers.  The young son, at one point, said something to his dad that I didn’t catch, to which his dad replied, “I know buddy, that’s why we’re out here practicing.”

​There was a man walking briskly through market alone.  He was dressed in black jeans and boots and a black t-shirt that exposed his heavily tattooed arms, his ballcap pulled low.  In some eras, we might have said he looked “tough”.  But the young daughter stopped him in his tracks to hand him the flower she was holding and complimented one of his tattoos.  Flabbergasted and smiling wide despite himself, he thanked her and ambled just a bit more slowly, with his head held just a bit higher, through the rest of the market.

I can imagine all sorts of lessons that father with the flowers was hoping to teach his children, but I wonder if he understood the lesson they were teaching us: to remember to practice kindness.  That kindness does not have to be big, or expensive, or even inconvenient.  That it’s the tiny little kindnesses that hold us up in this world.  A nod, a smile, just holding the door.  I mean, pretty much everyone is perfectly capable of opening doors on our own, but we stop anyway to hold the door for the next person, no matter who they are, to signify kindness.  To say, “I see you, fellow human, making your way in this world, and I am going to do this small thing to make that way just the tiniest bit easier for you because I, too, am human.”

If you zoom out, you see the conglomeration of all those tiny little kindnesses.  You see us recognizing and acknowledging our common humanity in each other.  And so, when you find yourself at the brink of losing faith in that humanity, remember those children handing out flowers to strangers, quietly making a stranger’s day just a little bit brighter.  Remember to notice the tiny little kindnesses that surround us as we move through the world. And then remember to practice. 

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