On Kindness - Tumblr Posts
on kindness
equal sign, jhope @btsinthemoment / everything everywhere all at once / P.O.P, jhope @doolsetbangtan / dogfish, mary oliver
-Terrance Hayes, The Same City
once i was doing the dishes and there was a hair strand poking my eye and i just couldn't get it out of the way with the back of my soiled hand and in the process my glasses got wet and dirty. all that in vain. finally i resigned to washing my hands properly, drying, then cleaning my eye and then my glasses and then finally went back to washing the dishes. in that moment i realised how much we need the people who love us and whom we love around us, so that maybe they can get that little urgent itch out of the way so you don't have to leave your work in frustration, so that maybe when you feel cold they can hold your hands and let you slide in the warmth of their quilt after a long day of tiresome work, so that maybe when you get stuck helplessly they can be by your side but not the way of undermining your independence just giving that little support we all deserve. in moments like these i realise how much we are meant to be together with people, with love, with kindness.
humans are animals. on a biological level, human beings are highly evolved mammals with complex social structures and well-developed brains. we eat, we sleep, we fuck. we raise our young and form tribes and fight for scarce goods. but i think that we are interesting because we are unparalleled in our ability to cause immense ripples in the universe, to leave a mark in our worlds and the worlds’ of others. we have the ability to cause outstanding pain, to tear each other apart with our words and rip out each other’s hearts. we are animals at our cores. but i think this fact makes our small kindnesses that much more meaningful, our moments of relief and pointless morals and ardent generosity all the more special. i have seen incredible hurt in this world, and i have also seen such genuine curiosity, gentleness, and connection. maybe it’s naive of me, but i think that most people do not want to cause harm. if given the chance, most people will choose kindness — to say thank you to the waiter, to pull their legs in when you walk through an aisle, to follow traffic lights and form lines even when it would be easier to cut. i think at our core, we want to do good, to try. i think that all of the pain and anger and hurt and violence only makes our amazing capacity for kindness that much more meaningful, that much more wonderful. in a senseless, brutal world, the fact that someone is helping a stranger pick up their spilled groceries or making silly faces for a baby is something to be cherished. something real. maybe, just maybe, it isn’t all bad.