I have returned to school and my job as a school librarian. On the opening day for teachers, we listened to a few speakers. I felt inspired and enlightened by their messages, but one in particular stuck with me: Choose Kindness.
Educators know that children and teenagers can be merciless in their dealings with peers. This is nothing new. I remember being bullied as a kindergartner in 1961. A classmate and I were the last ones left on the bus ride home, and she would push me into the very corner of the seat until I could hardly breathe.
Any student who is different in any minor or meaningful way can become a target. So can those who are shy, quiet, self-effacing. Educators know the value of choosing kindness.
Today, we live in a milieu of violence, making the option of kindness ever more important. We have a president who uses violent language and images to lash out at people and institutions that anger him. He was reluctant to clearly single out white supremacists, hate-mongers, as the instigators of the violence that wracked Charlottesville, Va., last month.
His words and actions have empowered those who love to hate.
And social media escalates any form of hatred, from schoolgirl quarrels to neo-Nazi recruitment efforts.
We need kindness more than ever.
The concept of “Choose Kindness” is a simple one, and I think it can be effective. One day last spring, I was in an elementary school. The fourth-grade students were about to play “Library Jeopardy.” They had been divided into two groups and, sitting on the carpeted floor, were busily electing a spokesperson who would voice the answers to the questions. (Or, since this was “Jeopardy,” the questions to the answers.)
A boy with a physical disability arrived at this moment. He sat down with the group nearest to where I was sitting. Immediately, several children moved away from him.
The boy’s face remained blank, as if he wasn’t surprised by his behavior. I wondered what I could do. To call the other students out in explicit terms would surely embarrass the victim and maybe even lead to further bullying.
I decided to say, “Let’s be kind. Being kind avoids all kinds of problems.”
I can’t say if this was the right way to react. Like all other adults, I’m always winging it. But there were no further incidents during that library period.
When I think about choosing kindness, I am inevitably drawn to President Abraham Lincoln’s words at his first inauguration in 1861:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
The “better angels of our nature.” Secession had ripped the country apart. Lincoln recognized that every human has the capacity to both love and hate. So he appealed to the “better angels of our nature.”
In other words, choose kindness.
Although, as I have stated, children have a capacity for incivility, they can also be inspired to climb to the moral high ground. If an adult says, “Stop that,” or even the more gentle, “We don’t talk that way here,” they just feel reprimanded, perhaps unfairly. But a reminder to “choose kindness” cues them. It plants a seed. Wait—there’s a choice? And that choice might make me stand out? Or for the shy follower—is this what is expected of me?
In asking them to choose kindness, we are appealing to the “better angels of their nature.”
I’ve been in education far too long to think that choosing kindness is a panacea for all that ails us. But it is a way to stand up to the forces in our world that are making hatred and violence acceptable.
I have written before about the way I observe American society deteriorating. I just returned from a weekend trip to Vermont, which entailed a long drive over narrow, often hilly roads. Alone, I needed to pull over from time to time to take a swig of water or check my phone. Once, I stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts in New Hampshire, just outside Concord. I checked carefully before reentering the two-lane highway and waited until the coast was clear.
I pulled out, and within a minute was assailed by loud honking. I looked around to see two motorcyclists suddenly behind me. Pulling over to the shoulder, I turned and saw one of the passing bikers glaring at me with intense hatred.
Wow! They must have flown out of the opposite intersection. Being unfamiliar with the road, I must have been going slower than they liked. I was was grateful that they continued on to Concord, while I went south towards Manchester.
But the world works in funny ways. I eventually reached Maine, and was a few miles from the Kennebunk rest stop on I-95. A group of about 15 motorcyclists drove onto the highway and merged into traffic ahead of me. But one last biker was left behind, and pulled in behind me. I slowed down so he could pass me, and rejoin his friends. Once he did, he lifted his left arm, his hand in a fist.
Was that a thank you? I believe it was. I chose kindness, and so did he.
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