Try Kindness

Last May, Professor George Saunders of Syracuse University gave what I believe to be a knockout address to the graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences. A friend of mine alerted me to it. Saunders started out with this:

“Down through the ages, a traditional form has evolved for this type of speech, which is: Some old fart, his best years behind him, who, over the course of his life, has made a series of dreadful mistakes (that would be me), gives heartfelt advice to a group of shining, energetic young people, with all of their best years ahead of them (that would be you).

“Now, one useful thing you can do with an old person, in addition to borrowing money from them, or asking them to do one of their old-time ‘dances,’ so you can watch, while laughing, is ask: ‘Looking back, what do you regret?’  And they’ll tell you.  Sometimes, as you know, they’ll tell you even if you haven’t asked.  Sometimes, even when you’ve specifically requested they not tell you, they’ll tell you.”

Humor seems always to lurk within the telling of great truth. But Saunders quickly became serious when he told about something he regretted in his life:

“ What do I regret?  Being poor from time to time?  Not really.  Working terrible jobs, like ‘knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse?’  (And don’t even ASK what that entails.)  No.  I don’t regret that.  Skinny-dipping in a river in Sumatra, a little buzzed, and looking up and seeing like 300 monkeys sitting on a pipeline, pooping down into the river, the river in which I was swimming, with my mouth open, naked?  And getting deathly ill afterwards, and staying sick for the next seven months?  Not so much…”

But what he did regret was this. And it harkened back to his days in seventh grade and a classmate of his. 

“Ellen was small, shy.  She wore these blue cat’s-eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore.  When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.

“So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (‘Your hair taste good?’ – that sort of thing).  I could see this hurt her.  I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked…”

 “Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it. “And then – they moved.  That was it.  No tragedy, no big final hazing… End of story.”

What Saunders regretted was that this event in his live was a failure of kindness on his part. Forty-two years later he is still thinking about it. Those moments in life when another human being right in front of us was suffering, and we didn’t do anything bad, but we didn’t try to be kind.

And that was Saunders message to those young graduates – Try to be kinder and see what happens.

But why aren’t we kinder? What prevents us from being so? Saunders relates three important things that keep us from being kind. We are all intimately acquainted with each one of them...

“Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian.  These are: (1) we’re central to the universe (that is, our personal story is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really); (2) we’re separate from the universe (there’s US and then, out there, all that other junk – dogs and swing-sets, and the State of Nebraska and low-hanging clouds and, you know, other people), and (3) we’re permanent (death is real, o.k., sure – for you, but not for me).

“Now, we don’t really believe these things – intellectually we know better – but we believe them viscerally, and live by them, and they cause us to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others, even though what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish, more aware of what’s actually happening in the present moment, more open, and more loving.”

And the way, he suggests, that we might DO this, to become kinder, is to essentially grow into it – intentionally being “more loving, more open, less selfish, more present, less delusional…”

He concludes:

 “There are ways [to become kinder].  You already know that because, in your life, there have been High Kindness periods and Low Kindness periods, and you know what inclined you toward the former and away from the latter.  Education is good; immersing ourselves in a work of art: good; prayer is good; meditation’s good; a frank talk with a dear friend;  establishing ourselves in some kind of spiritual tradition – recognizing that there have been countless really smart people before us who have asked these same questions and left behind answers for us…

 “So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up.  Speed it along.  Start right now.  There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness.  But there’s also a cure.  So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf – seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life…

“And someday, in 80 years, when you’re 100, and I’m 134, and we’re both so kind and loving we’re nearly unbearable, drop me a line, let me know how your life has been.  I hope you will say: It has been so wonderful.”

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