Day 20 — Kindness
I overslept the other morning.
I went to bed quite late, having stayed up to write a journal entry/article after working extended shifts on my first job and squeezing in time on my second one to complete tasks connected to imposed deadlines. I was exhausted by the time I went to bed and was looking forward to sleeping for a few hours before getting up.
Unfortunattely the alarm I thought I had set never went off and I found myself waking up at the time I was supposed to be leaving the house for a performance appointment connected with a choir I participate in.
Long story short, I texted the seating manager for the choir and informed him that I would be about fifteen minutes late. Generally, that kind of trdiness is enough to have your seat given to another member of the choir and you being asked to sit out for the week’s performance. After sendign the text, I jumped in my vehicle and drove as quickly and safely as I could. I arrived fifteen minutes late and found that many of the other singers had been moved from the positions they had been assigned earlier in the week.
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As I looked for my seat, my phone vibrated. It was the seating manager informing me of my seat, in the loft with the choir, signing for the week’s performance.
He would have been within his position to tell me that I was too late, that the position had been given to another, that I had missed my chance. But he didn’t. He acted with kindness and professionalism and communicated to me with respect and kindness.
Kindness is an ordinary thing. It isn’t flashy or fancy, it is just simple. It is similar to respect, except respect is often based on a position that has been earned. Kindness is often unearned. It is a gift, given from one person to another, in the interest of helping the other deal with a situation (or many situations) that are distressing to that individual. It is finding something within your power to do for someone when what is needed is outside of their power.
Ordinary. Extraordinary. Both at once.
It is moments like the one I had the other day that remind me how important it is to act with kindness in the world.
