Be kind when no one is looking

As my senior project at Bethany College, I took the advice of John Taylor, an English professor who fancied himself a curmudgeon but was among the kindest and most supportive professors on campus to many of us.

He suggested I look at the maxims of the 17th century French writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld, to see if I could draw any parallels from his words to modern behavior.

Shortly after the new year, I came across one of La Rochefoucauld's maxims that has stuck with me many years after college: "When our hatred is too bitter it places us below those whom we hate." The sentiment seems to be timeless and particularly salient now. It's one that has been echoed by others in essays, comic strips, political stump speeches, commencement addresses and elsewhere.

If we stoop to hating that with which we disagree, we risk becoming far worse than the thing we hated.

One antidote to stooping to hatred is also timeless, although it too has often failed to make its way from words to actions, and that's the charge to be kind.

In his biography of the writer Henry James, Leon Edel writes about James' nephew Billy's recollection of his uncle saying, "Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."

The quote is often attributed to Mister Rogers. Ellen DeGeneres regularly ends her daily television show with the admonition: "Be kind to one another." When I was invited to address the student body of Bethany College several years ago, the important message of being relentlessly kind was central to the talk I gave. I still believe so.

When small acts of kindness particularly to strangers are committed, they are often met with surprise, suggesting that making an effort to be kind is not yet the norm.

On two successive days this month, B.G. was surprised by kindness in Colorado where she lives. After she responded "not smooth" to the barista who asked her how her day was going, he responded with: "Well, then your drink is on me." A day later as B.G. was gathering her belongings from her car after she parked, a woman knocked on her window to let her know she was putting money in the parking meter for her. Two small acts that shifted B.G.'s mood about her day.

As B.G. put it, the acts "completely reframed my mindset."

"Kindness is powerful," B.G. observed.

Indeed, it can be. And I'm not talking about the type of kindness that results in finding your name splashed across local or national media because you paid off someone's tuition bill or you left a sizeable tip to a hardworking waiter. I'm not talking about doing good deeds because some research has found that doing so can result in reducing physical pain from which you might be suffering.

Those are indeed acts of kindness, but even more important are those which we commit with no expectation of anything in return.

Kindness can indeed prove powerful. The right thing is to be kind even when no one is looking. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.