In conversations with friends, I've chatted about the idea that the concept of love could be decoupled from the idea of providing resources. In our culture, we tend to associate love with willingness to provide resources – whether it's time, money, food, shelter, or attention – to the person we love. However, if we decouple them altogether, it's now possible to love anyone unconditionally without feeling like you are stretching yourself thin.

But after thinking more about how kindness works, I'm realizing that looking at it as providing “resources” doesn't really capture the process of giving all that well.

For one, I think that there are plenty of times when what we give are much, much more nebulous than what can be strictly defined as “resources”. For example, instead of giving time or money, we might give kind words or put ourselves in psychological or physical discomfort for others, and it feels strange to me to characterize this as “providing a resource”. When you add the set of nebulously non-resource things we can give to each other – words, safety, thoughtful gestures, potential to actualize – to the idea of resource, I honestly cannot think of a good word for the combination of everything we can give. Perhaps I'll think up a better word for it one day, but as of now, I can only call it “giving” as opposed to “giving resources”.

There's another big reason that I think the framing of “giving resources” is quite flawed. When we thinking of the idea of giving resources, we think of zero-sum transfers of assets where both sides value that resource equally. In some of the most important acts of kindness, this mental image is just not true.

To someone who is homeless in Winter, a blanket means much more than another item in the closet. To someone who's looking to escape an abusive family, small gestures of giving and trust can mean more than the world. Using Heinrich maneuver takes little time but could save a life. Giving a child a dime so that they could buy their favorite candy could mean a long-term faith in the generosity of others.

What I'm recognizing now is that even when you don't feel safe enough to give a lot yet, a significant amount of possible kindness arises when you notice that there are opportunities where your contribution makes a large difference in someone else's lives. These types of situations are not very common, which means that following social norms will generally cause you to ignore these opportunities to give without thinking too much about why. But if you can get past that psychological barrier, then you open up the opportunity to not only make a huge difference in someone else's world, but to create a new norm of kindness and thoughtfulness for those around you. I think this is part of what makes kindness so inspirational.

One of my hopes is that in this new year, I'll be able to recognize and give more in this type of situation.

— Categorized under: #social, #psychology, #kindness, #interactions

What is non-performative? To give an example, there's the old saying in dating that you should observe how your date treats the waiter, since it shows how kind your date is when not biased by trying to impress you. However, since this saying has now become universal, the act of how you treat the waiter itself has become performative. That is, your date might treat the waiter nicely to try to impress you.

So now you have to expand what you observe in your date to understand how kind that person actually is. It doesn't necessarily have to be about which person they are kind to though. Kindness can also show through small details, like how patient someone is when an order takes a long time, etc. These acts are usually done without awareness of performance, which makes them better signals of someone's kindness.

Is that all, though?

Thinking back to the people I met in my life, I can point to at least one instance where a friend is quite kind even non-performatively, but her kindness breaks down significantly under stress. When not stressed, she's the type to make all kinds of small gestures one wouldn't think of to make people feel welcome, comfortable, and at home. However, when stressed, she had a tendency to lash out at those immediately surrounding her.

So maybe it is true that kindness is only fully observable under stress after all. It's not a satisfying conclusion, but nevertheless a useful one to keep in mind.

— Categorized under: #kindness, #psychology, #interactions