Why It Costs Everything to Be Kind

Art by Greene

My friend Greene Spiro recently shared this essay she wrote back in June of 2020, and I thought it was beautiful and deserved to be more widely read. So here it is…

I was scrolling through Facebook, dodging alarming posts about the current pandemic and liking posts that were more distracting, a toxic habit of my own, I suppose. However, as I scrolled I came across a pretty image with fancy lettering that said, “It costs nothing to be kind.” This wasn’t the first time I had seen this phrase. In fact, I had been seeing the words regularly for quite some time. Irked, but why? What bothers me so much about this seemingly harmless phrase? I had to meditate on this question for some time…

The idea, I suppose (Although I don’t know the original author) is that kindness should be so easy that it comes effortlessly, or possibly they literally mean that it costs you no manner of personal sacrifice, which is ridiculous. Kindness, true kindness, can cost you everything.

Kindness is a risk, it is a moment of vulnerability. You cannot be kind without being vulnerable. It is the meeting point of one human recognizing that another human (or animal) is worthy of sacrifice. Kindness always comes at a cost, but it is up to the individual to determine whether they are willing to pay the price or not. Definitions of kindness may vary from community to community, but there is an overlapping theme -equality… “You are worthy because you are a living, feeling, and thinking being like me.”

Kindness may be as simple as words of affirmation, or as laborious as caring for a ward of ICU patients in the midst of a crisis, but both have a cost. When we use words of affirmation we are answering a question, asked or not. “You look lovely today” or “You are so great at this” may seem like effortless utterances, but if they are truly kindness and not selfish fluff to pacify a person in distress or to buy favor, they have been bought with observation, and you are telling the person, “in this moment I recognize your value and I sacrifice my time to acknowledge that value.” Similarly, but in a much more extreme situation, the ICU worker has said, “I recognize your value as equal to my own and I am willing to pay with the risk of my life.”

It is not kindness if there is no risk involved. When you give charitably, it comes at the cost of your labor. When you forgive someone for tresspasses, it comes at the cost of your pride. When you allow a friend to confide in you, it comes at the cost of your time, and possibly much more. Kindness can cost quite a lot, but it’s worth the price. Kindness is an investment -and that may seem the most unkind way to put it, but it is an investment in humanity. Sure, you may reap the rewards, but the goal is to improve the human experience for everyone. That is the goal of kindness. The world is so full of wrath, jealousy, apathy, and selfishness, but kindness is so good at washing these things away. So when we invest in kindness we are bolstering up our communities for their fights against human suffering and ultimately preparing for a future of human flourishing.