I recently went to three graduations from 5th, 8th and 12th grades. If you know about “Maycember” then you know I also went to a myriad of other events and recitals as well. For the events that I managed to listen to any portion of the speakers I heard a lot of messages telling the children to be kind. Lovely message as we would all agree, but it occurred to me that no one defined the word kind. I am fairly certain that none of the children could define it, and I’m pretty sure the speakers could not either. You see, most people think kind is to be nice.
That is wrong.
Let’s start with what nice means. Oxford Dictionary defines nice as “pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory”. The word that sticks out to me is agreeable. Being nice means I need to agree with everything, don’t make waves, don’t be out of step and don’t talk about unpleasant things or I’m not nice.
On the other hand, kind is defined as “having or showing a friendly, generous and considerate nature”. So kind people talk to people they don’t know, share easily, and think about what others need in a situation. Being kind does not mean that you agree with everything or that you go with the general consensus. Sometimes being kind means you tell someone they are wrong, or that they have something in their teeth! None of these are pleasant things to talk about but they are kind. Being kind to someone shows a level of care. You care to point out something is wrong because you want them to learn or grow. If you don’t care, you don’t make waves.
It’s interesting that we find being kind to babies easy. We push them to do uncomfortable and even painful things all the time. Like sleep alone, walk instead of crawl, feed themselves etc. all in the name of growing up. But once they hit a certain age that is unacceptable and we aren’t “being nice”. But more on this another day….
I think being nice is stupid and fake. I don’t want people to describe me as a nice person, I hope they describe me as kind, because no one ever learned or grew from a nice person but kind people make the world better. (Think how grateful you were when that lady by the bathroom told you your dress was tucked into your panties!)
So keep on telling people to be kind, but let’s make sure they understand what that means. Then go out there and be kind yourself.