On Kindness
Staying Human, Still Becoming
Kindness as Orientation
I’ve been thinking A LOT about kindness, about what helps us stay upright when things wobble. Perhaps in response to our world at the moment, perhaps because it’s a part of who I am.
Not kindness as politeness.
Not kindness as something we perform when we’re well-rested or emotionally ahead of the day.
I mean kindness as an orientation. As instinct. As something closer to nature than virtue.
I’m less interested here in being kind than in what kindness makes possible, as a stance rather than an action.
And yes, BE KIND, people. Wear the Be Kind shirts. Hold the door open. Please do. I have the sweatshirt and t-shirts. I have the stickers.
But I’m more interested, here, in kindness that lives deeper than a slogan. Kindness that’s woven into your heart, your gut, your sense of who you are. The kindness that shows up when things get uncomfortable and when no one is watching.
Poet Mark Nepo writes,
There are many reasons to be kind, but perhaps none is so compelling as the spiritual fact that it is what we do.
He describes kindness as
“…how the inner organ of being keeps pumping.”
That framing matters to me. Kindness not as a moral upgrade, but as something essential. Involuntary. Like breath.
Nepo points to the natural world, such as berries growing sweet, ants building small hills no one sees, and wolves howling, as reminders that living things offer kindness as themselves, not because it is safe or rewarded, but because it is their nature.
I’m hearing Mark Nepo and appreciate this perspective, well, actually, this wisdom. And it sends me looking for where that same truth shows up in my own life.
Right Where Life Is Happening
I keep coming back to the idea of living kindness in the middle of things, not at the edges, not in theory, but right where life is actually happening. It’s what I do, and I believe it’s what we do. And maybe that’s why we’re in so much turmoil right now.
Right now, for many, right where life is happening, we’re fighting the innate instinct of kindness. We get caught up in emotion, in fear and grief, in politics and policy, and we build walls of disagreement instead of gardens of agreement. Where life is happening right now, many have lost touch with the instinct of kindness, even as many more continue to hold it.
It’s as if berries intentionally chose to be bitter, or wolves decided to stay quiet. They don’t…because they can’t. It’s in their nature to be sweet and to howl.
It’s in their nature. Kindness is in ours. It’s essential.
And I hope this is truer than it sometimes feels.
Yet, I still believe in kindness because I witness it in our natural world every day. Thank you, again, Mark Nepo.
This past weekend, on the East Coast, we were all watching the weather. A system offshore, lots of talk, forecasts shifting by the hour. The kind of winter moment that makes you prepare, just in case. And then it moved out to sea. The weekend was filled with blue sky and no snow. Still cold. Still winter. Just without the weather arriving the way we expected.
It’s just what happens when Mother Nature and Jack Frost share their talents. The weather isn’t personal. It isn’t cruel. It isn’t kind. It’s simply being what it is. Nature doesn’t decide whether to be itself.
I walk the beach near me in Wells, Maine, often, and see that the tide doesn’t stop to check whether the shoreline is ready. It comes in because that’s what tides do. It acts from instinct, not intention.
A tree doesn’t argue with the wind. It bends, maybe loses a branch, and keeps growing.
A chickadee doesn’t wait for spring to sing. It calls out in the cold, quick and ordinary, as if to say: I’m still here.
And I think kindness, at its best, works the same way.
It shows up before we have time to decide what to call it, though it doesn’t take much fear to push it aside.
Poet Ross Gay writes about spaces where…
“…there is no pretense anywhere, and everyone is welcome.”
That’s what this kind of kindness feels like to me, not dramatic, just spacious. A widening. A softening. A remembering of our humanity, of who we are and how we live.
Remembering that if we choose kindness, if we stop arguing with ourselves, keep growing, keep singing, our kindness is still here.
Kindness, the Nervous System, and What Gets Narrowed
I also come to this understanding of kindness through my years as an early childhood educator, working with Pre-K and Kindergarten students. In those classrooms, kindness wasn’t abstract or idealized. It was practical. It showed up in small ways. A child making room on the rug. Another handing over a favorite marker without being asked. Kids noticing when someone was having a hard morning and sitting close.
Often, no adult prompt was needed. The instinct was already there. My role wasn’t to manufacture kindness, but to protect it, model it, and create a space safe enough for it to surface.
Over time, and later through science, I learned why this felt so true. Research suggests that humans are born with the capacity for kindness and cooperation. Even young children show spontaneous helping, comforting, and concern for others. Kindness, it turns out, isn’t something we invent later. It’s something we arrive with.
What changes isn’t our capacity, but our access. What I saw so clearly in my classrooms doesn’t disappear as we grow older; it just becomes harder to reach under pressure.
Under chronic stress, fear, grief, or threat, our nervous systems narrow. Empathy tightens. “Us versus them” thinking increases. We move into protection instead of connection. Not because we are failing morally, but because our bodies are trying to keep us safe.
When kindness isn’t protected, it doesn’t disappear. It becomes harder to reach under pressure. Functionally weaker, not ethically lost. Dormant, not gone.
And the hopeful part is this: what narrows can widen again. Kindness can be reactivated through practice, safety, and belonging. Through being met with care. Through choosing, again and again, to soften where we can.
The inner organ doesn’t stop pumping. Sometimes it just needs oxygen.
A Classroom Moment I Carry With Me
There is another place my understanding of kindness comes from, one I think about and smile about often.
After the loss of my partner to suicide in 2009, I returned to my Pre-K classroom two weeks later. I remember walking back into that space and being met with the familiar energy of four- and five-year-olds, their excitement at seeing me and each other, their bodies and minds already in motion. I fell back into the rhythms I knew. Morning meeting. Snack. Recess. The comfort of routine.
Later, we moved into math. I had manipulatives on the table, colorful, small bear-shaped, set out for counting or sorting, I can’t remember. I sat nearby, guiding students, watching, easing back into the work.
At one point, I noticed a child across from me staring. Not distracted. Not playful. Just looking at me, smiling.
Then he asked, very simply, “Mr. Karaiskos, are you really tired or are you really sad?”
There was no performance in that question. No awkwardness. Just noticing.
I paused. Took a breath. Held back a tear or two. And I said, “I’m actually sad. Thank you for asking.”
He nodded, as if that made sense.
Then, without missing a beat, he looked down at the table and said, “Okay. What are we doing with these bears?”
That first question, about how I felt, remains one of the kindest, most sincere questions I was asked about my grief after I returned to school. Not because it lingered. But because it didn’t.
There was no fixing. No distance created. Just care, followed by presence, followed by math, and back to sorting bears.
I don’t share this to diminish the care of my adult colleagues, or maybe I do. I share it because children often show us what kindness looks like before we complicate it. He noticed. He asked. He accepted the answer. And then he stayed, counting bears.
That, too, is kindness.
When Kindness Isn’t Visible
I’ve been thinking, too, about what it asks of us to hold kindness in moments like this, where our world is today, when it is not what we’re seeing most clearly around us. When adults, in public spaces and public roles, respond with harshness, rigidity, or force. When fear is loud. When power tightens instead of softens.
I don’t want to minimize the harm in those moments. And I also don’t want to flatten the people inside them.
The science helps me here, not as an excuse, but as a lens. When nervous systems are overwhelmed, when people feel threatened, unseen, unheard, or destabilized, the capacity for kindness can become inaccessible. Empathy narrows. Protection takes over.
This doesn’t make unkind actions acceptable.
But it does remind me that what we are often witnessing is not the absence of humanity, but humanity under strain. People acting from constriction rather than connection.
Kindness doesn’t mean silence in the face of harm, and it doesn’t mean the absence of boundaries.
Holding all of this doesn’t mean looking away. It means refusing to dehumanize in return. It means remembering that kindness, even when dormant, is still part of our human inheritance.
And that the work, especially now, is not only to orient toward kindness ourselves, but to create conditions where more people can find their way back to it.
Grace, in this sense, is not passive. It is steady. It resists the pull toward “us versus them” by insisting on something harder: seeing fear and context without surrendering our values or our care for those harmed.
And, for the record, I’m flailing at all of this, too. I stumble. I wobble (and I’m overusing the word wobble lately, but, well, it works for much of how I am feeling in the world lately). I get it wrong more often than I’d like. This isn’t easy work. It’s just work I keep returning to.
When Kindness Stings
Mark Nepo is also honest about the cost. He reminds us that reaching out can sting and that sometimes, other beings sting back. That, too, is part of the natural world.
Some creatures protect themselves with sharp edges.
Some people meet care with distance, defensiveness, or harm.
That observation matters. It tells the truth without turning kindness into naïveté.
Kindness isn’t about guaranteeing a good outcome.
It’s about alignment.
About choosing to live in a way that feels true, even when it costs something.
Writer adrienne maree brown reminds us that
“…what we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.”
If that’s true, then kindness, even when it stings, is not small work. It’s foundational.
What Guides Me
I love this quote from Doctor Who, a message from the Twelfth Doctor as he regenerates into the Thirteenth Doctor (if that’s confusing as a non-watcher, don’t overthink it, it’s sci-fi, just receive the quote):
Never be cruel.
Never be cowardly.
Remember, hate is always foolish, and love is always wise.
Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.
I don’t hear that as sentimental. I hear it as ethical clarity. Especially the distinction between nice and kind. Nice can be thin. Kind has roots. And kindness is the soil.
Being kind, in that sense, isn’t the starting point. It’s what grows when kindness is already there.
Hate is always foolish.
Love is always wise.
Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.
And then there’s Kurt Vonnegut. In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the character Eliot Rosewater speaks to a room full of newborns:
“There’s only one rule that I know of, babies, God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
Spoken to newborns, it doesn’t land as instruction. It sounds more like recognition. As if he’s naming something already true, something we arrive with, before we know how to perform it.
Still Becoming
I don’t think kindness is soft.
I think it’s durable.
It adapts.
It bends.
It keeps going.
I don’t think kindness is separate from belonging or mattering or flourishing or any of the other work we need to do to heal our world. I think it all grows from the same soil. We feel like we belong when kindness is present. We know we matter when someone treats us as if we do matter. We can flourish with kindness.
I’m also learning that kindness toward others has to live alongside kindness toward myself.
Not instead of. Alongside. Making space to rest. To say no. To admit when I’m tired. To stop confusing self-erasure with generosity. Kindness is not self-erasure, and generosity is not the same thing as disappearing.
Still becoming, for me, means staying aligned with what feels most true.
And kindness, imperfect, human, sometimes messy, is part of that truth.
I will keep reaching out.
I will keep offering care.
I will keep lifting where I can.
Not because it’s easy.
Not because it’s always met well.
But because it’s what I do, how I am oriented.
Because it’s how the inner organ keeps pumping.
Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind. — Henry James
Support
I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):
🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.
🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence
🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities
I’d be honored to walk beside you.