Stubborn Kindness - Roots

 

When you drive the car out of the dealership, with the tank filled to the brim, it feels like it can go forever, why fill up? Infatuation—the zippy zing, the giddy in-love feeling where all is roses, glowing clouds and cheerful sunshine—is the courtesy tank, it helps you get to the next station where more costly, and longer lasting fuels are available, like commitment, cherishing and sacrifice.

            When we feel nice it sort of spills out, costs encountered under the influence of infatuation are hardly costs, often the gifts and gestures are as much about appeasing our own romantic state of mind as benefiting the other, not that there's anything wrong with that—it helps to get things going.

           When infatuation begins to run low, however, what's left becomes apparent. Now there is a noticeable price to being nice, one isn't carried along on a torrent of romantic impulse, it's becomes more like walking than just being dragged along. It costs more, and it also means more.

 

Testiness is answered almost by reflex—how effortlessly injuries are multiplied, but kindness is easily snuffed.

            Have you ever gone out of your way to be thoughtful and it's received badly, or tried give a surprise and it backfires in a humiliating misunderstanding? The last thing you feel like doing is trying again. When you reach down to pat the nice little dog, surprise it from a doze, and it promptly sinks its nice little teeth into you hand, it leaves a nasty feeling. You know it was a mistake, but you just feel like hating him for a bit, it makes your injured pride feel better.

            It happens so often when people make an effort to be uncharacteristicallykind or charming—the other person just isn't prepared and responds coldly out of awkwardness, wishing they hadn't straight afterwards, but not saying so, and leaving the first person feeling ruffled and injured and sure to never try that again. Then person two tries to be nice to make up for the coldness, but now person one just wants a chance to bite back and get even.

 

That is the type of context for stubborn kindness—determined, tough, persevering kindness. Often it is not answered with the same immediately. It needs to be sustained because when it falls like a cloudburst in the desert it will most likely just wash away in one big muddy confusion. It's only when rain is consistent that the ground responds and comes alive.

 

Tough crusted people that soften towards someone also become tender and vulnerable. Then little stabs go deep.

            When someone leans over the water to grab your hat, that would be the easiest time to push them in. There is a vulnerability in acts of kindness, it says 'I care,' it puts you in a place where you can be rejected and embarrassed, and it's so easy for someone else to take advantage of the situation for a little cheap, spiteful revenge (which always feels justified.)

 

Techniques are allowed a term to produce results, after which, if there are no results, they are abandoned. But kindness is not a technique, not a great tip for bringing back the love. It is a large part of love. Charm is the technique, it's mostly exercised to get a response, and if the response is wrong it is easily bruised. Kindness is a gift, and in many cases an expensive one, in currencies such as pride, time and energy. Like love, it isn't regulated by the response. It doesn't need to be repaid in order to be worth the effort, it is already good that the other person is being cherished. But it gets even better when it becomes a mutual giving.

 

Graciously acknowledging kindness is kindness too, and watching opportunities for kindness sail by is just a passive form of meanness.