It feels like we are living in sharp and brittle times. The country, and much of the world, seems perpetually angry, destabilized, and on edge. Tempers are short. Patience is rare. Everyone appears exhausted, defensive, entitled, self-serving, and quick to dismiss one another. Outrage has become the default posture, and cruelty is too often excused as honesty or strength.
In the midst of all this, I keep returning to kindness.
Not as sentimentality. Not as denial. But as something far more serious.
Kindness, rightly understood, is not weakness. It is not naïve optimism or moral laziness. It is a deliberate refusal to let the anger of the age take possession of the soul. It is a form of resistance, quiet, steady, and deeply human.
Kindness does not ignore the pain of the world. It sees it clearly. It recognizes the fear beneath the shouting, the loneliness beneath the entitlement, the grief beneath the hard edges people present to one another. Kindness understands that most people are not malicious; they are overwhelmed, unhealed, and afraid.
And still, kindness chooses another way.
In a culture that rewards outrage and speed, kindness slows us down. It insists on listening when it would be easier to dismiss. It remains gentle without surrendering truth. It refuses to dehumanize, even when provoked, even when wounded.
When institutions fail and public life fractures, kindness builds small shelters. When politics poisons nearly everything it touches, kindness keeps human faces in view. When the world feels unstable, kindness becomes a refuge, not a grand or dramatic one, but a daily, stubborn, sustaining refuge.
Kindness may not fix everything. But it will get you through, every time.
It keeps us intact when so much around us is unraveling. It preserves our humanity when anger threatens to remake us in its own image. It reminds us who we are, even when the world seems determined to forget.
In difficult times like these, kindness is not optional. It is essential. It is how we survive without becoming what is breaking us.
So I choose kindness. Again and again and again.
Not because the world always deserves it but because it is how we remain human, and how we find our way through.
Love,
+B