on kindness

what is kindness, anyway?  

Another good quote:

 

“I. THIS IS NOT A GAME.

 

II. HERE AND NOW, WE ARE ALIVE.”

 

You can be kind and fuel it with rage. You can be kind and fuel it with a bitter twist, or you can be kind and fuel your kindness with righteous anger, or you can be kind and fuel it with love or spite or ecstatic joy. And no matter what your fuel is, you still can make kindness happen in the world so that people can warm themselves by it.

 

Kindness isn’t an emotion, kids. That’s the thing. Kindness is action. Kindness is choosing to take your emotions and channel them towards doing the most good where you can; to choose the targets of your actions carefully; to spread a little joy behind you, when you have a little to spare.

 

Kindness can mean a gentle word or a shouted imperative. It can be a warm meal or a gentle hug or a clean death. Kindness can manifest in many ways, and not all of them are one hundred percent nice. The kind thing to do may be doing nothing at all. 

 

But kindness is, above all else, an action. We are imperfect humans, and we cannot control our emotions–but we can control what we do as a result. We can control the actions that our emotions and experiences propel us to perform. 

 

The darkness is nothing but the absence of light, you know. It is endless and nihilistic and all enveloping. A lit candle has no hope against it.

 

But if enough of us light small candles and little matches behind us as we walk through this wide, uncaring universe, we can light up that sky. We can take an empty world and we can fill it with each other. 

 

That’s how we can take the bones of an empty universe and forge a warm hearth fire humanity can use to keep back the night.