Tag: kindness

O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree, how lovely are your choices

On the way to school this morning, I heard an interview with a Canadian man who travels to New York City every December to sell Christmas trees. Every year, he fights to win a corner spot, and he builds himself a little insulated shack to live in for a month; and then he sells his trees.

He hinted that he witnesses some pretty rough things on the sidewalks of the city, and the whole thing sounds pretty grueling; but he spoke about the whole endeavor like it was mainly an adventure, or a personal challenge, like an extreme marathon, or a wilderness survival test.

But the part that really struck me was when he said, in his charming Quebecois accent, “There’s a privilege of bringing happiness to homes.”

“It’s just joy. There’s few jobs where you actually bring happiness to people. And I worked in the Bronx and I worked in Manhattan, which are two different experiences. But most of the time, the answer is the same. Like people are happy you come with the Christmas trees. You’re kind of mythical, folkloric creatures, like Christmas elf bringing them like holidays, which is super fun, super fun.” he said.

At first I thought, “Wow, he really is lucky. What a cool thing, to be able to be the guy that everyone’s glad to see.” Because it’s true: You are sort of predisposed to feel friendly toward the person who sells you a Christmas tree. It’s not a normal, everyday transaction, and even if you’re rushed, or annoyed at the price, or frustrated by the logistics involved, it’s a special and cheering thing to come into possession of a fresh, fragrant, scratchy, rustling, deep green tree, and to have someone hand that over to you.

Every day, we buy milk and toilet paper and office supplies, and we pay our bills, and drop off parking fines, and have countless dreary, joyless transactions with people we don’t think twice about; but it’s probably only once a year we come home with our arms full of evergreen. And that’s what he’s a part of, all day, for a month every year. A lucky man!

I thought of all the people who spend 40 hours or more doing the opposite kind of job, giving people things that nobody wants. The prison guard. The teacher who teaches a required class that everybody hates. The repo man who comes around to take away the car you can’t afford anymore. The oncologist who has to tell you, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing more we can do.” Or even just the meter maid who leaves a ticket under your windshield, or the customer service rep who has the bad luck of catching your call when you’ve already been treated poorly by the previous four reps, and now you’re good and mad. What unlucky people!

I thought of my own job, which is and always has been a mixed bag of pleasant and awful, easy and hard. It’s easier than it used to be in many ways, and it’s harder in a few ways, these days. What do I do these days? I take care of children and manage the household. I cook, and I clean, and I schedule, and I drive. I write for magazines and websites, and I more or less choose what I get to write about, and how. I feed the dog. I feed the ducks. I cover and uncover the bird. I pull the cat off my keyboard and toss him lightly on the couch, or maybe less lightly on the floor, if he trampled all over the essay I was writing.

Later today, I’ll probably talk to a pharmacist and ask again whether my migraine injections have arrived yet (probably not); and I’ll probably talk to at least one cashier and bagger and maybe a clerk of some kind. I’ll check my bank balance, and second guess everything we’ve spent money on this week, and anxiously check the mail. I’ll check out my comboxes and my Twitter replies and see who needs to be thanked for their support, who needs to be ignored, and who needs to be sent to inbox gehenna for their unrepented online sins. I’ll pick up the kids from school and moderate maybe half a dozen little skirmishes between siblings on the way home, and I’ll deal with expectations and misunderstandings and defiance and badly articulated needs. I will comfort, counsel, laugh, chide, and navigate a thousand human interactions, which is the main thing I do every day.

I am lucky. I know that. But I also make my own luck…. Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image: Phil Roeder via Flickr (Creative Commons) 

In some ways, the world is getting kinder

As I was writing this essay, I got a call from a blind man named Henry. He needed help finding the front door of his apartment, and then help making his way through the somewhat maze-like halls of his building, around several corners, through several sets of doors, down a ramp, and into the lobby where the stairs were.

He walked holding his phone, and I guided him based on what I could see on the live video. At one point, it was too dark for me to see where he was going, so with his permission, I tapped my screen to remotely turn on his phone’s flashlight, lighting his way. When he got to the lobby, he thanked me, we wished each other a good day, and we hung up. Simple as that.

The call came through an app called ‘Be My Eyes’, and it works wonderfully well. It connects blind and visually impaired people with randomly-chosen volunteers who can help them out in various ways. At last count, there are 431,970 blind people using the service, and nearly six million volunteers. Someone always answers.

If you want evidence that the world is getting meaner, you don’t have to look far. I won’t even supply examples, because I’m sure several sprang to mind. Entire careers and industries are dedicated to keeping supplies of human cruelty fresh and constant, and to making sure we all think about it all the time.

But there is also evidence that the world is getting kinder. The ‘Be My Eyes’ app is just one. Despite how it may feel some days, we’re not all engaged in some inexorable downward slide into Gehenna. There are countless happy warriors everywhere, waging tiny battles to retain their humanity day by day, and to find ways to be kind to each other.

Here are some I’ve noticed recently, when I decided to look:

Many libraries no longer charge late fees. I’m sure they were partially forced into this decision, because people were simply not returning books, and then never going to the library again; but the general impulse — “all is forgiven, just return to me” — is a wonderful one, very much in keeping with the Gospel. Good stuff.

Several video games now have what could be called “little buddy mode” — a setting or character designed for a younger, less competent companion player who tags along with a more skilled gamer. They can feel like they’re part of the action, but they aren’t at risk (or else they can regenerate endlessly), so it’s harmless fun for them to join in. (Super Mario’s Nabbit, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Yarn Yoshi, and Mario 3D World are some examples of some variety of this feature.)

To be sure, this isn’t altruism. It’s a product made because the company thought it could sell something. But it’s a beguiling idea, and caters to a wholesome and friendly consumer need, rather than a cruel and low one, which is something you don’t see very often.

More and more parking lots have reserved parking spots not only for disabled customers, but for pregnant women and for parents with babies. One of the greatest baby gifts someone ever gave me was a reserved parking spot in the last month of my sciatica-ridden pregnancy, saving me a short but very painful walk to and from the school door five days a week. Again, partially consumer-driven, but kind and merciful all the same for the grateful woman who really needs that spot.

The proliferation of GoFundMe’s, meal trains, money pools, Amazon wish lists for strangers, and other easily-sharable means of supporting people in need. Yes, sometimes they are foolish, and sometimes they are scams, but very often they literally save lives, and people in crisis are rescued with their dignity intact. This is something that simply didn’t exist 15 years ago, and it’s very good that we have it. It just about redeems the internet, and it’s good that people with only a little money to donate are given the chance to join in on a good deed.

‘Buy nothing’ groups have also proliferated on the internet. This is a resurrection of a practice from another age, when people would “wear it ’til you wear it out; make it do or do without.” Now, pushing back against the tsunami of discarded consumer goods, there are myriad groups where people can list what they no longer want, and I have rarely seen anything go unclaimed.

The other day someone said she had several spaghetti sauce jars without lids, and I rolled my eyes, thinking no one would want her excess recycling. Within minutes, another woman happily claimed them, saying she was selling cut flowers at the farmer’s market and needed more jars for vases.

I have also seen people request furniture, clothing, and all manner of things for their families, and someone always something to share. People want to share; it was just the mechanism for doing it easily that was lacking.

Any time we need to fix something around the house, or make a car repair, or even make a costume or a party prop, we head to YouTube, and there is almost always a useful instructive video.

Sometimes they are slick, monetized videos that someone produced as a business, but very often, they are just little movies that people have made because they know how to do something, and they would like to help other people out. There is no money or fame involved; they’re simply being helpful. This is purely lovely.

Little free libraries, and little free food pantries, and other little free structures have been erected all over the landscape, just so people can share what they have with each other. These little free-standing miniature sheds started popping up a few years ago and people have not gotten tired of them yet. It’s easy to see why.

There’s no paperwork, no income requirements, no humiliating process where you have to display your poverty before some beneficent committee. If there’s something you want, you simply take it. If you have something to give, you simply leave it. Simple and kind.

The concerns of children are taken more seriously than they were even a generation ago. Some of this is legislated, with child labor laws and efforts to abolish statute of limitation laws regarding abuse; but some of it has just made its way into the social order.

You don’t have to “but abortion” me. I know that there is immense cruelty and hardheartedness toward unborn children at the same time. That doesn’t negate the good that is happening, and it’s truly good that adults today are much more likely to listen to a child who says they are being bullied, or who says they are feeling anxious or afraid or overwhelmed, or who says something bad is happening to them.

In general, we treat children more like full humans, and this is a very good thing.

There’s a real trend away from remarking on people’s appearances. I was skeptical at first, and thought that this trend was merely lip service that people would be trained to do so as to appear correct; but my younger kids seem truly acclimated to the idea that it simply isn’t normal or acceptable to judge someone based on how they look.

It will be fascinating to see how far this trend goes, and how it affects people’s actual behavior toward each other, but even if it only reaches so far, it’s been pleasant to see that it’s no longer socially acceptable, for example, for a man to dismiss a female colleague simply because she isn’t attractive to him. Guys still behave like this, of course, but at least in many quarters, there is now always pushback. When I was growing up, no one would have batted an eye. There really is change afoot.

It’s become more and more common for businesses and schools to offer free menstrual products in their bathrooms, along with other hygienic necessities like toilet paper and soap. Since about half the population menstruates, and these products can be prohibitively expensive, it’s wonderful to see more corporations acknowledging a responsibility to provide these goods so women and girls can show up and function at full capacity.

There is more and more integration of adaptive equipment in public places for people with disabilities. More playgrounds have adaptive swings and other play structures; more churches offer sensory-friendly services and more gyms and entertainment centers offer sensory-friendly evenings; more crosswalks have auditory aids; more museums have adaptive displays for the impaired; more supermarkets have adaptive carts.

These accommodations are not only great so people with disabilities and their families can live their lives, it’s good for the rest of the world to constantly recognize that people with disabilities are fully part of the community, and that their needs are different but just as legitimate as the needs of abled people.

And there is more. I’m sure you can think of examples, if you look. These things have a way of building on each other. If you see that the world is kind and kindness seems normal, then it’s easier to start contributing yourself.

What can you add to this list?

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A version of this essay was originally published in The Catholic Weekly on October 5, 2022.

Photo by Greg Dunlap via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Hush, there’s a baby nearby!

Advent at the Fisher house includes singing, lighting of candles, opening a door on the Advent calendar, reading the passage from the calendar’s matching booklet, picking the appropriate homemade ornament and hanging it on the Jesse tree, looking up and reading the corresponding passage from scripture, and plucking the chocolate out of your own personal Advent calendar, if you haven’t already eaten them all, if you haven’t already brushed your teeth. Well, brush them again, then.

Fisher family Advent has, in short, transcended tradition and achieved rigmarole status. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m happy to be doing special things that we don’t do at any other time of year. It’s a nice combination of scripture and aesthetics and memorable lessons, perfect for children and adults alike. It wouldn’t really feel like Advent without it.

But it would feel even more like Advent if I didn’t yell at everyone the whole time we were doing it. It would feel more like Advent if I focused less on reading the right Bible verse in the correct tone of voice, and focused more on being open to the word of God. If I lit a flame in the darkness and let that symbol speak to the kids’ hearts’ directly, rather than correcting them for pronouncing “Is-ra-el” wrong, or brooding in my heart that I’ve raised them all wrong, and we need to start doing scripture drills every night, and I need to start being a better mother so I will have better kids who do things better. 

If, in short, I prepared a way for the Lord for the sake of the Lord, rather than preparing for the sake of getting preparations done.

Shh, there’s a little baby nearby! 

That’s what I’m trying now to keep in mind. This thought, this image of a newborn nearby, helps make my Advent a little more like Advent. It makes everything a little gentler, a little quieter, a little more slow and thoughtful, just as if there were a tiny baby in the next room, someone I don’t want to disturb, someone I don’t want to grieve. Someone whose world I want to make warm and quiet, soft, welcoming, and kind.

I can’t always control what I have to do during the day, but I can control how I do it. For the sake of the baby nearby, I can take a breath and give a mild answer if someone insults me. For the sake of the baby, I can offer help to someone who’s struggling, rather than waiting for them to ask. I can warmly compliment someone for achieving something small. I can hush my tone of voice; I can apologize sincerely when I screw it up. I can try again without flagellating myself for my inevitable sins. I can skip the sarcastic remark; I can forego the conversation that will only lead to irritation. I can think of the baby nearby, think of the kind of world I want him to grow up in, and I can do what I can to make it a little softer. 

I can recognize that I have been noisy and quarrelsome, critical and demanding, and I can think of the baby nearby, and I can hush.

This is what works for me, since so much of my life has been dedicated to caring for babies. But what about you? What if you don’t have a baby in your life?

Oh, but you do.  You have someone helpless, someone in need, someone who needs patience, someone who is easily frightened or overwhelmed. Someone overlooked. Someone who is just starting out, someone who isn’t getting much done but could still use some praise. Someone whose world would be better if you decided to act out of love. 

The “baby” may look like a snotty teenager, an obnoxious co-worker, or a difficult parent. It may look like a pushy stranger on the sidewalk, or a rude cashier. It may look like a priest who’s disappointed you, or an internet troll who really is out to get you. It may look like someone who never thinks of what you need. 

Or it may even be yourself. We can be so extremely hard on themselves at this time of year, keeping up a constant interior litany of blame and reproach for not doing it right, telling ourselves terrible things that we’d never dream of saying about anyone else. 

This is what people are like: Needy and demanding, fussy and inconveniently fragile. Would we respond any differently if the people we encountered were new babies? Could we be a little more gentle?

What if you remembered that you, yourself, were a little baby once, and even though you can feed and care for yourself now, you still deserve to be treated with gentleness, even if only by yourself? 

At all times of the year, but especially at Advent: It’s always about the person closes to us – or, if you like, it’s all about the baby nearby. And this is how we serve the Person who, liturgically speaking, is nearby, about to be born. We tell our kids that Christmas is Baby Jesus’ birthday, and the kind of presents he wants is for us to be good to each other — and yes, to ourselves. Sometimes the best kind of goodness we can offer is just a little gentleness, a soft touch, a decision not to make noise. A little hush, for the sake of the baby. This is a good way to make way for the Lord: With gentleness.

It’s Advent. There’s a baby nearby. Hush, hush. 

[This essay has been modified excerpted from an essay first published in The Catholic Weekly in 2016.]

Image by Paul Goyette from Chicago, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s treat retail and service workers like human beings

This year, I have three kids working in retail. One is at a giant arts and crafts store chain, one is at a deli counter in a supermarket, and one is at a popular coffee shop.

One has had potato salad thrown at her. One has had her teeth insulted. And one just started his new job yesterday, so nothing bad happened yet, but his last job was at an old-fashioned candy shop, and you’d be amazed to see how spectacularly nasty people can be when they’re surrounded by jars of brightly colored sugar.

When my kids get home from work, they often dejected and bitter about the interactions they had with customers. These are decent, competent kids who really make an effort to do what is expected of them; but just because they’re behind a cash register or have an apron on, so many customers allow themselves to vent their spleen and call them names, insult their intelligence, blame them for things they can’t possibly control, or just treat them with disgust, rolling their eyes, sighing noisily, flapping their hands with disdain. I know it’s only going to get worse as it gets closer to Christmas. If Christmas shopping is a beast, they all work right in the heart of that beast. 

Customers are stressed out and overwhelmed by all the shopping and planning that needs to get done (or at least, that they’ve convinced themselves needs to get done). I’ve been there! When lots of people are depending on you to fulfill their expectations, it’s hard to keep perspective.

But really. Everyone. When is it ever more important to keep your perspective? If you’re not going to treat strangers well when you’re preparing for the birth of Christ, then when are you going to treat strangers well? The day after Christmas? The day after that? Maybe on your death bed?

Let’s all make a resolve to get this right, this year. Lots of people working retail and service jobs just got hired, and are just learning the ropes right when it’s busiest and everyone is at their most demanding.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

 
Image by Pedro Serapio from Pixabay

Well-behaved characters rarely make books (but here are some that do)

You know that irritating bumper sticker, “Well-behaved women rarely make history”? Well, poo. First, it’s not everyone’s job to make history. The world functions better for everyone when most people go to work, act decently, are thoughtful of others, and save the rebellion for emergencies.

Second, and more importantly, it depends what you mean by “well-behaved.” If you mean “The only possible way to change the world is to take your top off and scream at people,” then I’d have to demur (and so would the Virgin Mary).

It’s true, though, that well-behaved characters rarely carry books, and it’s hard to write a book full of people who are kind — by which I mean disposed toward helping and being generous toward others, preferably gently and good-naturedly. It’s possible to write such a book, but it’s rare.

Authors of children’s books, especially, tend to want to give their characters authenticity and appeal by making them sassy, prickly, bratty, rebellious, morose, or dysfunctional — or good at heart, but with a tremendous flaw to overcome. Kindness is often portrayed as weakness or naïveté, and not desirable as a dominant virtue.

Here are a few of my favorite characters who are not only basically virtuous, but who always, or almost always, show kindness to other people in the story.

First I’ll get the two wild cards out of the way: Dido Twite and Pippi Longstocking. You can argue with me if you like!

Dido just barely qualifies, because she learns kindness gradually — but it’s a trait that anchors her character. I’m rereading Joan Aiken’s Nightbirds On Nantucket and am just in love with Dido, who wants so badly to get back to London, but realizes that drippy old motherless Dutiful Penitence is more than just her ticket home.

Dido gradually takes responsibility for patiently teaching Pen to enjoy life, to become less fearful, to stand up for herself, and to practice loyalty. Dido and Pen’s characters both develop, and they ultimately escape their predicament, as Dido deliberately cultivates kindness and gentleness toward the fragile Pen.

(Joan Aiken is great at portraying kind but interesting, well-realized characters: see cheerful Nate in the stories with Dido, and also the resourceful and protective Simon (in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Black Hearts In Battersea). To a lesser extent, Arabel of the Arabel and Mortimer series is also a kind and responsible kid, although she’s also just naturally mellow.)

Pippi Longstocking is outrageously kind, a trait is just as much a part of her character as her outrageous recklessness.

She spends her time alone cooking and packing picnics for her friends, hiding treasures, and organizing all sorts of surprises and adventures. She’s enraged only by bullies who prey on the weak; and she uses her own incredible strength only for good (and some showing off). When her teasing and storytelling confuse or upset someone, she is usually contrite. Without her kindness, her outsized personality and habits would be monstrous.

The Pippi Longstocking books aren’t about character development, anyway — partly because they’re episodic, and partly because they’re sort of mythical, with Pippi as a preternatural figure whose inexplicable strength, cleverness, generosity, and radical independence are entirely self-sufficient. It’s impossible to imagine Pippi growing into adulthood or marrying, because she is already a complete person. She’s not depthless, though. She does weep, briefly, over a dead bird; and once, Tommy and Annika see her alone in her kitchen at night and it occurs to them, for the first time, that it’s possible for someone so strong and cheerful to be lonely. These glimpses into her private life make her kindness more believable.

Which other books portray characters who are thoroughly kind, without reducing them to dull foils for naughty kids with more spirit?

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett plays fairly close to the line, as Sara Crewe is almost overwhelmingly virtuous in every way.

But the scene where she struggles mightily with herself to turn her long-coveted bun over to an even hungrier child is very moving, and the book is saved from absolute melodrama by the strength and suspense of the plot and by the writing itself.

Burnett’s The Secret Garden, published six years after A Little Princess, is the better book and has more complex character development. The main character and her foil are both selfish, immature, and self-pitying early on, and their conversion and development are gradual and believable. But Dickon, the outdoorsman, is gloriously kind and open-hearted, as is his whole family.

Most people would include Charlotte of Charlotte’s Web in a list of kind protagonists, but I have always struggled with this book. It includes too many hard truths and not enough comfort for my tastes; and I always thought Charlotte was much too hard on little Wilbur emotionally, even though her actions saved him in practice. Of E.B. White’s books, my very favorite is The Trumpet of the Swan,

which includes the watchful, helpful, and loyal Sam Beaver.

She’s not in a chapter book, but I can’t neglect the lovely Nyasha, the good daughter in Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe.

The unforgettable illustrations go a long way to filling out her character, but her words and actions also demonstrate unflagging kindness, patience, and civility toward every single creature she meets, from her nasty, scheming sister, to the apparently needy folks she meets in the woods, even to the snake she encounters on the throne at the end.

(In the category of fairy tales, the 2015 live action movie of Cinderella explicitly praises kindness as a virtue to be pursued. Recommended!)

Mrs. Trotter of The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Peterson?

Oh, my heart. Her kindness is a little complex. She acknowledges that poor William Ernest Teague’s education need a harder edge than she can provide, and so her kindness perhaps shades into weakness; but in a throwaway line, she stands by her basic character, acknowledging dryly to the social worker that she’s well aware the world doesn’t consider her a real mother. Oh, Trotter. The truest portrayal of a good Christian I’ve ever seen in literature, period, for kids or for adults.

Strangely enough, the wild, anti-authority, sometimes brutal Roald Dahl books often have central characters who are very kind. Some of them are kind to most, but vengeful toward their parents and enemies, and this response is portrayed as delightful and just; but some wish even their enemies well, and are willing to risk their own safety for their friends. Charlie of Charlie in the Chocolate Factory is like this, and so is James of James and the Giant Peach;

and the vengeance is wrought by fate, rather than the protagonist. I haven’t read The BFG in many years, but I recall that the BFG’s main trait was kindness. In Danny the Champion of the World, the father is meant to be a kind man, but the reader of conscience can’t ignore than he is a criminal and a vengeful man.

Honorable mention goes to the very helpful Elmer Elevator of My Father’s Dragon,

who takes everyone he meets at face value, never uses more force than necessary, and even remembers to bring a birthday present home for his father.

Likewise Freddy the Pig throughout Walter R. Brooks’ extensive series of books,

who sometimes gets irritated or falls into self-pity, but is ultimately the friend everyone needs to have. The trio of cows, Mrs. Wiggins, Mrs. Wogus, and Mrs. Wurtzburger are also kind sorts, and tremendously appealing.

Finally, a recommendation from Rebecca Salazar: John Carter from A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I haven’t read this series, but I trust Rebecca (although she warns that the series is 100 years old, and contains references to “red men” and savage Apaches and the like, and that the first three are the best).
She says: It is a cheesy pulp novel, but one of the overarching differences between John Carter and the martians is that he treats subordinates and defeated enemies with kindness, and he doesn’t just automatically kill someone because they’re an enemy.

One example of kindness in it is that the green Martian tribe Carter becomes a chieftain in have horse analogue animals that they basically subdue through force, and this they’re dangerous to their riders, but Carter treats his with kindness and tames them and the rest of the warriors are shocked by how superior his mounts are because of this.
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As you can see, my reading list needs some updating! I stand by all my recommendations, and hope that my kids will love these characters as much as I do; but I’d be happy to add to the list, especially to include newer books.
Who else in children’s literature is predominantly kind without being dull, two-dimensional, or drippy?