The Truth of Kindness

Have you ever opened a door for someone? Perhaps you guided someone to a place. Maybe even shared part of your lunch with someone. Have you done any of those things? Maybe you’ve done something different but along those lines. Well, let me break it down for you, those actions I just listed, were all small acts. As I’m sure you can guess, those were all small acts of kindness. Let me spell it out for you, K, I, N, D, N, E, S, S, KINDNESS.

As you can probably tell or already know, today is Friday, November 13, 2020, otherwise known as World Kindness Day, or if you wanna be dark, Friday the 13th, but let’s be positive today and keep things nice, sweet, and entertaining because that is the point of this article, essay, story, narrative, whatever you wanna call it. Back to my point, World Kindness Day is today, now what does that mean? World Kindness Day is a day that is dedicated to highlighting good deeds in the community which focuses on positive power. Now if you’re like me or one of my teachers that wants the simplest terms, World Kindness Day is basically just to celebrate humankind being humans, and when I mean being humans, I mean being kind and wholehearted.

Time for a bit of background information. Blech, I know, boring, but I promise that this paragraph will be entertaining and the least boring I can make, and so will the rest of this article. World Kindness Day was introduced in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement and is celebrated in multiple countries. Now, I can only speak for the US when I say this so I apologize to readers internationally, but particularly in the US, there are organizations that dedicate themselves to kindness. Some include the Be Kind People Project and Life Vest Inside. You might be familiar with one of them because they are both YouTube channels! And if I know teenagers these days (hint: I’m a teenager too), they are all about YouTube, oh and TikTok too, but let’s focus on YouTube in this scenario.

Here is the Be Kind People Project’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/bekindpeopleproject and Life Vest Inside’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/LifeVestInside.

You should definitely go check them both out, each channel has very quick videos, ranging anywhere from seconds to under five minutes if you’re busy.

Personally, I’ve watched Life Vest Inside’s YouTube channel, and one of their videos was very positive and uplifting, for me anyways, here it is if you would like to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwAYpLVyeFU, it is under six minutes long and I think it would definitely put a smile on your face.

Anyhoo, now that you have some background information, let’s get back to the good stuff. The reason I pointed out these channels was because if you are a visual learner or somebody who likes to see things and not read them, you should definitely check out those channels because they will get my point across, you just won’t be able to get my insight/commentary which I hope is keeping you engaged right now.

So, based off of the video I watched from Life Vest Inside, kindness is a never-ending wave/ripple. You know when you toss a rock into a lake or a pond, ripples appear, and they just keep on going? They stop eventually, due to science, physics, gravity, and the fact that it’s in a small area, but you get my point. However, with humans, it could keep on going on! The only thing that could stop it would be a human! In the video, it started off with a person helping a kid who fell off his skateboard, and then, that kid helped an elderly woman cross the street by carrying her groceries and it just kept on going on, because everyone passed the kindness forward.

Now you may not believe that it actually happens, but especially in the circumstances we are in today, today’s world needs kindness, and a lot of it. As Life Vest Inside says, “Because kindness keeps the world afloat,” and I don’t know about you, but I believe that. Think of it this way, a sad person would be considered someone that is underwater because they can’t swim. By being someone that will take just a minute or two out of your day to help that person out of the water, you are both being kind and helping to keep the sad person afloat. Also, wouldn’t it make you happy to see them smile because you were kind to them?

As humans, aren’t we supposed to take care of each other, be kind to each other, and help each other out? Like I said in the previous paragraph, you could change someone’s frown to a smile, just by opening the door for someone or by doing another small act. That smile could be the change someone needs, it could be the difference between them crying or laughing and having fun. It could also be the difference between someone ending their life or not.

If you’ve read “Sophomore Year: Depression,” you know what I mean by that difference, I won’t go too much into it because I don’t want to spoil the book, but kindness really could be that difference. As stated in this article from Psychology Today, which is a website that was given to me by a therapist/counselor, it talks about how kindness is what could prevent someone from committing suicide: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-is-state-mind/202002/random-acts-kindness-day-compassion-and-mental-health. It also says how you truly never know how a simple gesture can save a life. Side note: if you or someone you know is in need of a therapist or counselor or any type of help, please use that same website to find a therapist or find resources to help you. If you live in Las Vegas, I personally recommend Ms. Skarlet Forwood. She was a safe school professional at my school and was very helpful, you can learn about her here: https://www.empoweringmindsnv.org.

You never really know how big of an impact your small act of kindness can make. Look back at your life. I want you to try to remember a moment someone was voluntarily kind to you, or when someone did something for you that they weren’t allowed to do. Now think of how big of an impact it left on you. The moment you are thinking of may not have been significant, but for others, it might’ve, but I’m 99.99% sure, had to include the .99 for people who want to be very precise, you have had at least one moment where someone was kind to you and it left a big impact, you just may not remember it.

Now, enough about how being kind affects others, let’s talk about how being kind can help YOU. Did you know that kindness boosts your serotonin, which heals your wounds, calms you down, and makes you happy? Also, kindness boosts your oxytocin, which promotes social bonding with others, essentially, it helps you to make friends, simple as that. These are just two out of the many effects kindness can reward you by. Don’t believe me? Look it up, it’ll say the same exact thing. On top of that, compassionate people have 23% less cortisol which is the stress hormone/maker. This is the truth of kindness, learn more here, which is where this information was retrieved: https://www.lifevestinside.com/about/why-kindness.

Yay! You did it! You learned the truth of kindness, but we’re not done yet. Again, kindness can change someone’s entire day. Let that sit in your mind for a minute. While you’re thinking about that, let me tell you a small story. When I was in third grade, I went to a public school. At that school, there was something called a buddy bench, and that bench was where kids could sit if they had no one to play with that recess. Now you may be thinking, Kean, that didn’t work, sorry to break it to you, but fortunately, you’re wrong. Sure maybe the first week no one really used it, but after that first week, students started sitting on that bench. There would maybe be about four students on that bench at the same time. Every day, I saw each and every one of them find a playmate, or someone to spend the rest of recess with. Those students that sat on that bench, had smiles minutes later. Can you believe it? This changes everything.

You see, kindness, is not just being generous, it’s about being an actual human being and helping out someone. Like one of my teachers used to say, help society out, don’t just be an air-breather that just takes up oxygen. Which makes sense, if you were on a team and your team was assigned a project, you would want everyone to work on it. Now, let’s say you got a 100% on the project, but one of your teammates made no contributions whatsoever, you wouldn’t want them to get the 100% as well, right? Now I’m not saying that everybody that doesn’t contribute to society should get their O2 taken away, I’m simply saying to just be kind, do one simple act a day or a week, however you want. But don’t just sit there and do nothing, if you’re ever bored one day, just go out and pick up trash, or go to the local grocery store or mall and while you’re browsing, keep an eye out for those in need of assistance, they’ll be glad you helped them, I promise.

“When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind,” Dr. Wayne Dyer famously wrote. Once again, I want you to ponder upon that quote. Let’s put that quote into an example, let’s say you and your friend were fighting over the answer of a problem. Now, in this scenario, let’s say you had the right answer to the problem and your friend didn’t, you have two choices, you could be right and prove your answer is correct to them, or you could be kind and don’t just put them down. By being kind you are morally doing the right thing because you won’t be brute by straight up telling them the answer, instead, you will be kind and you will tell your friend nicely why you’re right and walk them through the process of your answer. Wouldn’t you rather see a smile on your friend’s face than have an argument with them?

Alright, well this article has come to an end. Essentially, the action of being kind is just being human. Now, the truth of kindness, well, the answer is to each his own. The truth or the effect of kindness to me might have a different meaning to someone else, but what I described in this article was the essential gist of it. The truth of kindness is as I described, you bring joy to both you and others, you can destress yourself, you can also be the reason someone’s frown turns upside down and much more, but in the end, YOU are the decider of the meaning of kindness. You know the sayings you only get as much as you put in and treat others the way you want to be treated? Well, that is the case here. If you choose to be mean to others, you will be treated in a mean way as well, but if you choose to be kind to others, they will treat you kindly as well.

In conclusion, you could be the one thing that just makes a person’s day, be the reason that they are happy, be the start of something great, all you need to do is be kind and all of that will happen. Because in the end, no matter the race, religion, ethnicity, belief, culture, etc., we are all still human, and as humans, we should be kind to each other and help each other out, because there’s only one human race, and there’s only one life every person gets, so you should live that life to the fullest and be the positive change in the world. I only ask one thing of each of you before today ends, and that is to do one act of kindness, do a chore around the house, give someone a call, maybe a grandparent or a friend you haven’t talked to in a while, hold the door open for someone, ANYTHING, be creative! “Do things for people, not because of who they are or what you get in return, but because of who you are,” by Harold S. Kushner.

BE KIND

Because Kindness Keeps the World Afloat