By Amber, Supplements Buyer & Tomato Enthusiast
I find myself thinking, quite often these days, about the state of the world. To be honest, it's hard not to. Our obsession with reading about the myriad current tragedies is so novel that the COVID-19 pandemic granted us a new word for it: doomscrolling. There's a fine line between being informed about the state of the world and feeling helpless to do anything about it, and it's all too easy to cross that line.
One thing that gives me comfort amidst all the chaos is to simply focus on putting a bit more good out into the world, however I can. I've found kindness to be more and more a carefully cultivated act, one that must be initiated with intention. To be nice may be inherent, but to be kind takes work. Kindness is a muscle, one we have to consciously exercise. And like a muscle, the more we use it, the stronger it becomes.
During the heart of the COVID lockdown in 2020, I embarked upon a mission of conscious kindness -- doing things expressly for the purpose of making other people happy. One of my earliest acts of cultivated kindness was to tie a small note onto the thriving tomato plants my downstairs neighbors were growing on their fire escape, remarking on how beautiful their plants were. A few days later, I discovered a note on my back doorstep: "Your note made our day, thanks so much!", weighted down with a gorgeously heavy, ruby-red tomato. That note hangs on my refrigerator to this day, a small, potent reminder of the delight that can come from simply saying something kind. (The tomato, as you might expect, has long since been devoured.)
I am a hider of small encouraging notes under bus stop seats and in the knots of trees, a sticker-on of googly eyes to public trashcans, a complimenter of strangers. For a decade now I've kept a jar of spare change on my hallway table, adding to it whenever my pockets chime with coin, and when it's full I take the subway into Downtown Boston and spread my coins into the instrument cases of buskers in the Public Garden. (I've always believed that to create music in public is its own form of magic.) At a concert I attended recently, I noticed a couple taking pictures of each other in the venue's elaborately-decorated lobby; I stepped in and offered to take a photo of them together. A genuinely delightful conversation followed, during which I learned that they were Austrian tourists visiting the US for the first time, and that their mutual appreciation for this musician was what had actually brought them together years ago.
More than anything, I've found that cultivated kindness gives me a sense of control in this all-too-chaotic world. It's so easy to feel overwhelmed and isolated, especially when so much feels like it's out of our hands. But to deliberately create connection and community where there was none before - there's a gentle power to that like nothing I've ever experienced in my life. To be consciously and deliberately kind without expecting anything in return. There is strength in kindness. It is quiet, but it is a fierce and unstoppable force.