On Kindness
by Aracelis Girmay
Flowers & mothers, flowers & mothers all day long.
& the woman saying, I’m so lonely. I could kill myself.
& then quiet. & the man’s voice saying, It’s okay.
It’s okay. I love you, it’s okay.
& this made me get up, put my face, again, to the window
to see my landlord’s nephew outside, just hugging her so, as if
it were his mother, I mean, as if he belonged to her,
& then, again, quiet, I left the window but sat
in the silence of the house, hidden by shutters, & was amazed.
When the front door of the brownstone opened up
& let the tall nephew in with his sad & cougar eyes,
handsome & tall in his Carolina-Brooklyn swagger, I heard
him start to climb the stairs above me, & my own hand
opened up my own front door,
& though it was none of my business
I asked him, Do you know that women out there?
& do you know what happened next?
He said, No. The nephew said no, he didn’t know
the woman out there. & he told me Happy Mother’s Day
as he climbed the rest of the stairs. & I can’t stop seeing them
hugging on the street, under trees, it was spring, but cold,
& sometimes in the memory his head is touching hers
& sometimes in the memory his eyes are closed,
& sometimes she is holding him
& singing to him I love you. It’s okay.
I mean to tell you that everywhere I go
I hear us singing to each other. This way. I mean to tell you
that I have witnessed such great kindness as this,
in this, my true life, you must believe me.
I mean, on a Sunday, when nobody was supposed to be
watching. Nobody at all. I saw this happen, the two
of them hugging, when nobody was supposed to be
watching, but not a secret either, public
as the street, not for glory & not for a joke,
the landlord’s nephew ready to stand there for the woman
like a brother or a sister or a husband or son,
or none of these at all, but a stranger,
a stranger, who like her, is an earthling.
Perhaps this thing I am calling kindness
is more simple than kindness, rather, recognition
of the neighbor & the blue, shared earth
& the common circumstance of being here:
what remains living of the last
two million, impossible years…
I’m in the midst of my busy season, and for those of you who don’t know what I actually do for a job, that means helping seniors through the college process. It’s high-pressure work—there’s a lot to organize, and I ease the stress of students and parents—but I love it. It’s an incredible time to get to know a person, when they’re figuring out who they’ll be in the world, and I get to know some awesome young people who I truly believe will make the world better with their lives. And because it’s my busy season, I’m spending the vast majority of my day working through the ever-dreaded Common App essays. But the truth is, the Common App essay is a short, elegant little genre about personal growth, and it’s kinda great. I’m struck by how many of my students are writing about kindness. Pre-pandemic, there was a much-discussed study from Richard Weissbourd’s Making Caring Common Project that found 80% of kids think their parents care more about their achievement and happiness than about kindness, and from my view, I can see why kids would think that.
So it’s particularly striking to me how many of my students this year are writing about kindness and supporting each other. For context, these are the kids whose freshman year was cut short by the Covid lockdown—nearly their entire high school lives have been in the shadow of a national pandemic and the injustices and cruelties that have arisen from it. These kids are a refreshing contrast to the adult world. I admire how my students write about kindness: they talk about making space for others’ stories and voices; taking real, palpable care of others; self-sacrifice for the greater good.
Another genre most adults scorn and I appreciate is teen movies. Maybe the only requirement of the genre is that it stars teenagers, but most include a major thematic plotline of forming authentic friendship despite the socialized pressures of high school (a microcosm of the real world). How many adult movies have a storyline with similar ethical values? I’m a kid of the 80’s; I’ve nearly memorized The Breakfast Club; it played a pivotal role in shaping my middle school ethics; and I watch anytime I find it clicking through channels. I don’t care if the acting isn’t great or it’s kinda dated.
Look at the visual language of that clip! Their footwear shows how different they are from each other! The danger of getting caught brings them together! Notice the institutionalized the halls of the school, how ridiculously self-interested Principal Vernon is. Bender, the asshole, sacrifices himself for the others. Narrative perfection.
Many teen movies also have plot lines of mental health: the characters bridge the loneliness of youth, challenge social hierarchies and dominant paradigms, mess up and learn to fix their mistakes along the path of becoming themselves. Another reason spending all my time with teenagers is kinda awesome is that their generation is so open and honest about mental health. So many of my students want to study psychology to help others who’ve struggled with anxiety and depression. Rates of “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” have nearly doubled in the last ten years. The Atlantic has one of the best articles I’ve read about this national crisis.
The world is overwhelming, and an inescapably negative news cycle creates an atmosphere of existential gloom, not just for teens but also for their moms and dads. The more overwhelming the world feels to parents, the more they may try to bubble-wrap their kids with accommodations. Over time, this protective parenting style deprives children of the emotional resilience they need to handle the world’s stresses. Childhood becomes more insular: Time spent with friends, driving, dating, and working summer jobs all decline. College pressures skyrocket. Outwardly, teens are growing up slower; but online, they’re growing up faster. The internet exposes teenagers not only to supportive friendships but also to bullying, threats, despairing conversations about mental health, and a slurry of unsolvable global problems—a carnival of negativity. […]Amplify these existing trends with a global pandemic and an unprecedented period of social isolation, and suddenly, the remarkable rise of teenage sadness doesn’t feel all that mysterious, does it?
While my work makes me very much a witness to this national crisis, it also puts me in direct contact with the hope and cure (my students who write about kindness with wisdom beyond their years ). I’ve shared a clip from John Oliver in a past episode of Notions & Notes, but sometimes he just nails it.
We’re witnessing the changing of our planet at an alarming rate and that’s a level of stress we all share, no matter our age or political beliefs about the matter. If my students make clear that kindness is more about making space for others than any overt gestures, then this definition works for how to be kinder citizens of the Earth.
While I’m not particularly a drone enthusiast, I recently stumbled on the Drone Awards, and was kind of stunned about the story aerial photos tell about or place on the planet. Go swoon over the 2022 Drone Award finalists. I found the “People” category esspecially beautiful with all the different images of harvesting. From a drone’s eye view, we’re literally made small and our outsize impact on the landscape is put in perspective. For me, these photos speak to how we humans both make and take up space on our planet.
Let’s apply the lessons of being human that my students write about in their Common App essays: be kind to the Earth, listen compassionately to it’s stories and experiences, make space for it to grow and heal.
I found this article on trauma-informed placemaking because the photos from the Haus of Glitter in Providence, a queer BIPOC art collective, were cool. However, the article opened my thinking about how environment and place can impact both trauma and the healing from it. People carry trauma from climate displacement, violence, and socio-historical oppression.
Traumatic experiences can trigger long-lasting mental and physiological effects, which can be mitigated — or made worse — by one’s surroundings. “A physical environment that is dangerous, that feels unstable or unpredictable, will have our nervous system in a state of hyperarousal,” Vázquez notes, “while a physical environment that communicates consistency, predictability and care will calm our nervous system.”
Go read the rest of the article, it’s great.
Public spaces and art can contribute to the wellness of the community, regardless of status or privilege. “You cannot separate a sense of place and trauma-informed placemaking from people’s ability to live well in your community regardless of their socioeconomic status.”
I fucking love Providence.
This one’s a classic that I share still with students from time to time. George Saunders gave a graduation speech so good it grabbed national attention and got made into a novelty book. In the speech, he talks about how his greatest regrets are failures of kindness. I think about that phrase a lot, “failures of kindness.” These failures happen when we “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.”
But you--in particular you, of this generation--may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can ... . And this is actually o.k. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously--as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.
Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.
Saunders urges the graduates (or anybody) to “err in the direction of kindness".”
Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality--your soul, if you will--is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Theresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.
This is a chapter from Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, which tells four stories of human connections, all taking place in cabs in the same hour across the globe. It’s a perfectly conceived scene: a complete narrative arch that makes you think about your place in the broader world (where you come from, how you treat people), and it’s striking that the “space” is mostly confined to a cab. I love how Helmut softens Yo-Yo and Angela toward kindness. The last moments of Helmut driving uncertainly into the strange and hostile city are heartbreaking and beautiful.
I sometimes share recipes I love, and I make this recipe every corn season. I like to think of us (you and me and everyone else who made it this far) around a table breaking bread together. It’s a good way to share space with others.
Pasta with Fresh Corn Pesto (adapted from the August 2010 issue of bon appétit)
4 bacon slices, cut lengthwise in half, then crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces
4 cups fresh corn kernels (cut from about 6 large ears)
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese plus additional for serving
1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
8 ounces tagliatelle or fettuccine
3/4 cup coarsely torn fresh basil leaves, divided
Cook bacon in large nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp and brown, stirring often. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon drippings from skillet. Add corn, garlic, 1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt, red pepper flakes, and 3/4 teaspoon pepper to drippings in skillet. Sauté over medium-high heat until corn is just tender but not brown, about 4 minutes. Transfer 1 1/2 cups corn kernels to small bowl and reserve. Scrape remaining corn mixture into processor. Add 1/2 cup Parmesan and pine nuts. With machine running, add olive oil through feed tube and blend until pesto is almost smooth. Set pesto aside.
Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain, reserving 1 1/2 cups pasta cooking liquid. Return pasta to pot. Add corn pesto, reserved corn kernels, and 1/2 cup basil leaves. Toss pasta mixture over medium heat until warmed through, adding reserved pasta cooking liquid by 1/4 cupfuls to thin to desired consistency, 2 to 3 minutes. Season pasta to taste with salt and pepper.
Transfer pasta to large shallow bowl. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup basil leaves and reserved bacon. Serve pasta, passing additional grated Parmesan alongside.