Dear [Your Name],

Kindness week.

Kindness week wasn't nearly the ordeal I was afraid of because, as a challenge, it's not a very good one. It takes more than a week to figure out kindness, and much more than a week to make it a habit. It was effective, though, in making me think about kindness. These are thoughts;

Kindness is rooted in the assumption that whoever you're being kind to has value on account of being human.  That's what I think. In that light, it's a logical extension of imagining others complexly.

Kindness is more potent when applied to our closer relationships.

"Kind" tends to describe something that happened in a specific situation, rather than a person who ongoingly is kind.

Kindness is not so different from serving others. Having an attitude of kindness is not so different from having a "servant's heart", either.

Kind is different from Nice. Nice has largely to do with avoiding conflict, and has the connotation of being shallower. Kindness has more to do with doing something to the eventual benefit of the person you're being kind to.

I didn't know what to change in order to be kind, during kindness week. Where is kindness needed? How do you be kind without seeming self-important? What should I do in order to be kind? I don't know. This is the kind of thing people spend their lives doing, being kind.

I don't mean to overstate myself, so let's be clear: a week isn't enough time to fully realize what kindness is, so something in the above is probably a little bit not right, and certainly the definition isn't complete. A week also isn't enough time to adopt kindness as a habit. It hasn't drastically altered my behavior very much. I did not walk out of Kindness Week a fully different, better person.

Sincerely,
Claire