On the importance of kindness

It is so easy, almost reflexive, to be kind to a lost child, a new mother, or a baby who will not stop crying.

What is rarer to see, but more touching these days to me, are those individuals who take the time to be kind to a struggling elder.

This morning on the way to work, I passed a couple—I would guess in their eighties—on their way to McDonald’s. They were walking. The road was busy, the sidewalk cracked and uneven. The man was blind. The woman leading him was unsteady on her feet. Several cars stopped to let them cross the street. They were one fall away from this fragile, symbiotic relationship that enabled them to leave their home each morning for food. Was there a family member behind the curtain should that fall happen?

The answer is increasingly no.

How are we going to meet all those needs when we, in the sandwich generation, are already stretched quite thin taking care of our children and parents in the hours we are not working? And what does this have to do with kindness?

If we are lucky, one day we ourselves will arrive at the foreign port of old age and come to depend on someone who will patiently repeat something we were unable to hear, help us maneuver our walker into a shop, stop their car to let us pass, or as I recently saw at a wedding, hold us close on the dance floor while we feel the music.

To be kind!”