Things I’ve Learned Along the Way
By W. Owen Thornton

Following is a laundry list of things I’ve learned since starting www.thehumankindnessproject.com

I’ve learned that human beings are “Better Together” as Robert Putnam wrote in the book with this title.  In fact, when you read Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, we’re not only better together emotionally, but physically too.  In a study where people were exposed to the common cold virus, those who had a large network of friends resisted the bug more than those who did not.  Contrary to what you might think, that the more people you hang around with the more likely it is you would catch a cold, the opposite is actually true.  When you hang with a great many friends the brain reacts by releasing happy hormones which help prevent you from catching colds.

I’ve learned that eulogies are always delivered too late.  Don’t you think it would be great to hear all the nice things people say about you which they only say after you’re dead?  We need to get over ourselves and start having earlier funerals: ones where the recipient is alive and well and then we can REALLY celebrate their lives.  Maybe that’s why I always liked the old Dean Martin Roasts so much.  They poked fun at people in a way that was funny but that wasn’t mean and they honored them at the same time.  Maybe if we can’t throw premature wakes, we can host our own kind of ‘fun roasts’ for the people we love.

I’ve always had weaknesses.  This I knew before I started writing about human kindness.  But when I learned that my strengths are great gifts and that I should focus on them and let go of attempting to overcome my weaknesses (or to become balanced), this knowledge was a real blessing to me and I hope in sharing it with you it is a blessing for you too.  Remember it is not that having a weakness means we cannot do something.  (It might mean that, but it doesn’t have to.)  We may have the knowledge and the training to do the activity which is our weakness.  But the very thing we have when it comes to strengths, the drive and desire to do them because they are important to us and we know they work for us, is lacking when it comes to weaknesses.  It’s less about the fact that we can’t do something, it’s that we have the attitude around these activities that says, “Why Bother?”  Go to the great reads link on this website and find the names of the two Strengths books along with Break All the Rules, and begin reading them.  When you learn about your strengths and start celebrating them (instead of focusing on what you’re bad at) life gets a whole heap better.

I’ve learned that to be a writer and practitioner of kindness, you have to be a little freaky.  What I mean I can reveal by telling a quick story.  There is a young woman who came into my cafeteria at UWO on a regular basis.  I’ll call her Traci.  She is blind and cannot see the reactions of the people around her.  She walks in and finds someone at a table for four who is sitting alone and asks them her name.  She knows who she has met and who she has not immediately.  She asks to sit with them and most agree.  She talks a little too loudly, I think because of her lack of vision, and so you can often hear her side of the conversation three or four seats away.  She is kind and gracious and sweet.  She talks about pets and school and courses.  It’s much like a question and answer session with her.  I think most don’t know how to respond.  And when she runs out of questions and the person is done eating, they often leave her alone at the table.  They do so with a little bit of a guilty feeling (like they’re escaping from a strange person who really is quite nice).  At which point she turns around and introduces herself to the people around her, shaking their hands and saying, “Hi!  My name is Traci!  What is your name?”

Traci is the person I wish I could become more like.  I said at the beginning that to be a kindness practitioner you might have to become a little freaky.  The people Traci introduces herself too, often eye-roll and give their friends a look that says, “What up with this crazy girl.”  I don’t think she is crazy.  I think she is a living, breathing example of human kindness.  Everyone in that cafeteria, who sits alone, me included, sits in their little silos of isolation never saying hello to anyone else.  This pattern not only breeds loneliness (in a crowd) and isolation it creates a fundamental disconnect with others.  And if you believe the evidence that we’re actually happier and healthier together, then for these two thing’s sake I think we should all be a little bit more outgoing even if we see eye-rolling and questionable faces and expressions.  What do we care if people roll their eyes if we’re acting out of kindness?  (We should be complete and self sufficient anyway, right – so what someone thinks of us shouldn’t matter as long as we know we’re doing the right and kind thing!)  Someone once said a stranger is merely a friend you haven’t met yet.  So yeah, I want to be a little more like Traci.  (PS.  I have formally introduced myself to Traci.  We’ve had a nice chat.)

I’ve learned that to be kind to others you have to be kind to yourself first.  If you want to lift weights, do art, write poetry, play guitar or whatever else is on your list and you aren’t doing these things, this does something weird to us which isn’t very … well … kind.  You have to do and be who you are.  It might not make sense, but you have to do it.  I had lunch with a writer friend and he told me if you have to write it, you have to write it, whether it makes ‘cents’ or not.  So be the best you, you can be and let it fly.  Once you’ve done that, even for the first hour of the day, then you can be kind to others.  I guess what I’m saying is if you hold back from being kind to you, why in the world would you ever go the extra mile and be kind to anyone else?  You have no experience with kindness for others if you can’t practice it on yourself!  This is why you see so many articles about being kind to the self here at www.thehumankindnessproject.com because that’s where kindness truly starts.  Kindness grows from within.

I’ve learned that you have to look for kindness.  This is sorta like being actively kind, but different.  If you are looking for mistakes and fowl-ups, you will find them.  If you’re looking for acts of kindness, you’ll find them too.  Just as the brain tends to answer the questions you ask of it, (so you had better watch which questions you ask, because you will get an answer, even if it is untrue: Why do bad things keep happening to me?  Because I deserve them … (make a buzzer sound in your head here!  This answer is wrong!)  the mind finds what it is looking for even if it has to fabricate incorrect answers.  You know the story of the ferryman?

There was a city on an island and a ferryman took people back and forth regularly.  One day a visitor asked, “What sort of people live in that city?”  The ferryman responded, “What kind of people lived in your last city?”  “They were evil and nasty and miserable.  They would sooner spit on you as look at you.”  The ferryman said, “That’s what the people of this city are like.”  The next day a similar thing happened.  Another newcomer was on the ferry and she asked the asked the same question, “What are the people like in that city?”  The ferryman asked, “What were the people like in your last city?”  She answered, “They were lovely.  They would do anything to help you.  They fought for you and promoted you and cared for you and loved you.  I hated to leave, but I was hired here for a great job I just couldn’t say no to.”  The ferryman responded, “That’s what the people in this city are like.”
A regular customer having heard both conversations waited for the newby woman to walk away and then he questioned the ferryman on how he could tell two different people such contrary stories about the same place.  The ferryman responded, “You find, my friend, what you are looking for.”

I’ve learned that even though you blog about human kindness, you sometimes fail to be kind.  None of us are perfect.  But, when you write about kindness, have ideas about kindness you’re going to write later.  You collect stories about kindness, and you do your utmost best to promote kindness.  You are kinder than you would have been otherwise.  I’ve learned that mostly we’re saints who sin a little bit now and then, rather than being sinners who … well … just sin a lot!

I’ve learned that no matter how much you want an email, and a general announcement, and a letter to build community, that community building starts with one-one-one meetings in neutral third locations.  Community building cannot be fast.  It is slow.  If done well and slowly, then something magical happens later: it grows and explodes into brilliance.  I heard a story today that has been traced to a single woman in Toronto.  All over the country in Tim Horton’s drive-throughs the person is asking what the person behind them bought: and they’re paying for it.  Now, you never know when you go through a Tim’s drive-through if your coffee will be gratis courtesy of the person ahead of you.  It is like the true story of the boy who wore pink.  He wore a pink shirt to high school and was severely bullied because of it.  The story made the local media and within a couple of days everyone in the school was wearing pink in support.  The story grew and soon young people were wearing pink at high schools all across Canada.  I saw a CBC TV News report where a high school senior football star was wearing a pink t-shirt with a little outline of a white kitten on it.  Sensational!  These are the kinds of kindness stories we love to report on.  This was an ad hoc, spontaneous anti-bullying movement that grew to epic proportions overnight.  Ideas, when they catch on fire, well?  They catch.

Lastly I’ll conclude with this:  I have always believed that human beings are magical.  This website is an ‘encourager’ to help us use, create, find or invent the magic we always knew we had but thought we’d lost.  The world can be a wondrous place but it’s up to us to help it along.  Never leave kindness to chance when you can give it a little leg up now and then.

Blessings for a wonderful Christmas season and for a Happy New Year too.

Owen