Kindness Training

I’m not an unkind person, but I’m certainly not someone for whom the attribute “kind” is the first thing that comes to mind. In fact, kindness is an issue I’ve grappled with since about 2nd grade when I wasn’t very nice to a classmate. I snubbed her friendly invitation to play and headed off to inch my way into a group that seemed more popular. This behavior became a habit, particularly with this one girl. I’m not sure when I realized I was being unkind, but I do recall that I eventually came to think about it at night when I would promise myself to be nicer to Judy the next day. But I never seemed to be able to pull it off.

I thought about it for years, especially when I felt myself behaving similarly to others later in life. What was astonishing is that at my 10-year high school reunion, Judy greeted me warmly as if I was one of her oldest and dearest friends. We had a wonderful chat, and I learned that she and her husband had bought a home around the corner from the house in which I grew up. She regularly talked with my dad and knew a lot about my life. Had this woman never felt my snubs? Or was she simply one of those extremely forgiving and, dare I say, kind people?

The Judy scenario was one that continued to niggle at the edges of my conscience for years. And though I eventually could catch myself in the act of such behavior and change it, I hadn’t exactly stopped doing the snub thing. Moreover, another example of a particular lack of thoughtfulness slammed me one evening as I rushed into a big bookstore to make a purchase while my spouse waited in the car. The man who held the door for me called attention to the fact that I had walked right in without so much as a thank you. I was terribly embarrassed, so much so that I couldn’t even make my purchase. You see, my spouse had been calling me on this lack of courtesy for a while, but when a stranger pointed it out, I woke up.

These two incidents had a great deal to do with my plan to go into kindness training in 2014. Athletic models work for me so training was the word that worked. It seemed that I had been aware of this flaw in my character for a long time, but I had not been able change it. Training was necessary to make that happen. Here’s an overview of the training I’ve undertaken this year:

1.  I needed an affirmation. Kindness became my word for 2014.

2.  I needed a coach, so I bought and read Guerrilla Kindness by Gavin Whitsett. I used a highlighter and post-its to mark the suggestions that stood out—many that had never occurred to me and some that I wanted to beef up in my life.

3. Then I made a list of 66 Kindnesses that I wanted to work on this year (I’m 66 this year, so that’s where the number came from).

4. Whitsett recommends marking 20% of the Kindnesses that you think will be easy to implement, so I did that too.

5. Then I set an alarm on my phone to ring every Friday at 7am reminding me to reread the entire list and create a “Kindness Plan” for the upcoming week. I list 4-6 Kindnesses, two of which are more challenging or take longer or more effort.

6. Then I get to work training to be kind.

I’m not an intuitively kind person, like my spouse or one of my granddaughters, but I have to say the impulse is getting more automatic, and I LOVE Fridays. There is so much joy in working on a specific Kindness, like preparing a meal for a friend who is ill, dropping off old magazines at local laundromats, stopping to buy gift certificates for ice cream, the car wash, or movie tickets to give to service people. I’ve learned the names of 10 of my neighbors, so I can speak to them by name when I’m outdoors. I’ve trained myself to the let others end hugs and handshakes.

Best of all, I’m swerving off my intended path more often than not to lend a hand when I notice the opportunity for kindness. No more niggling worry about snubbing Judy, but I do offer a mental thanks to her for helping me see the light.

Dengue & Me

I might not ever know for sure if I had dengue fever, but what I do know is that after I returned from Baja Sur, I fell ill in a whole new way. I was wracked by fever that set my blood or my nerves (I could never be certain which) humming with agitation. The constant sensation of tremor that didn't subside even when the fever did was disconcerting and frightening. Thirst was constant and yet water often tasted metallic or sometimes like flowers or putrid like sewage. Cottonmouth was a constant. My entire digestive system was rumbling, not with hunger but with tiny waves of peristalses that made me feel constantly sea-sick nauseous. Meanwhile, the headache behind my eyes made me yearn for darkness. I couldn't look at a screen for more than a few minutes. On the worst day, I could barely text a three letter response to my daughter who was monitoring me from her home while Cindy was attending an event where I was supposed to be. A tiny bloody nose started a sore in my nose that caused me to sneeze again and again for days. My lips were chapped and my upper lip felt swollen with herpes that never actually appeared. I shuffled from the recliner to the couch in my office to the bed, trying to change my recumbent position to ease the constant ache in my back. Every step made my head pound and my eyes blur. Tinnitus rang in my ears.

On day 3, the fever subsided. On Day 5, I woke in the night with such severe nausea that I decided to go to the ER for monitoring. It was the right thing to do in terms of getting blood work and easing my mind about symptoms that might have indicated I'd moved into DHF—Dengue Hemorraghic Fever—the more severe version, the onset of which is 4 to 7 days into the illness, but the experience left me beyond sad about the absence of my long term family doctor, Warren Borgquist, not to mention wasted from being out in the cold in the middle of the night. By the middle of Day 6, I sensed a shift. The tremor was quieting, not so noisy in my body and maybe even absent for minutes at a time. That was the day that Cindy and I teamed up to make chicken soup. She was sick with a cold, and we knew we needed to nourish ourselves if we wanted to recover. We cooked an organic chicken and sat at the counter to cut vegetables and strip the chicken off the bones. Then I took a long nap and when I got up, I was able to eat a few bites, the first food I'd been able to eat other than mashed potatoes since getting ill. Over the next few days that soup was hugely nourishing. Soon, I was munching on raisins and eating applesauce in between larger and larger bowls of soup. On day 9, I had my first cup of tea, ate a boiled egg and tomato sandwich, and rode with Cindy to town to get a movie from Redbox and veggies for spinach salad. She took one of her scenic routes (read geographically challenged in Sonora) and I didn't even care. I just looked out the window and enjoyed the fall colors.

This morning, I'm sitting in front of a screen writing a blog with a cup of tea on my end table. I'm five pounds lighter, my lips are cracked and peeling, and the face that looked back at me from the mirror this morning is tinged with gray BUT I'm on the other side of my strange tropical illness. This morning I added a book to my wish list: “Almost an Island: Travels in Baja.” Not shying away from that exotic, intriguing place, though I will be sure to pack mosquito repellent for my next visit there or anywhere such insects fly.

Transition: What's next after high school?

Two of my grandsons, the eldest two, are about to graduate from high school. Their parents are thinking about what the next steps will be for these boys, and I suspect the boys might be giving it some thought too. I like my position as grandmother, one who has a little distance from the momentous step these boys are about to take.

I do have some pretty strong opinions about the transition from high school to young adulthood. My ideas are based on watching my own 3 children make the transition and also come from witnessing the children of friends and family as well as hundreds of young people at Columbia College take this step.

I think kids need to embark on a growth inducing activity immediately after high school, in particular one that throws them out of their comfort zone into an environment that challenges them. The degree of challenge depends on the kid, but it should definitely push their edges, make them feel uncomfortable and confused and ultimately provide the space and support to develop effective decision making skills. In most cases, this involves moving to a new setting away from the home and family in which the child was raised.

Here are some of the things I've seen accomplish this transition effectively:

• going to a foreign country either as a student, a missionary, or a traveler,
• going into the military,
• doing service work, e.g. working in inner city schools or conversely wilderness areas, assisting in a disaster or poverty torn area, Ameri-Corps, California Conservation Corps, or other service directed group,
• getting a full time job,
• moving into an apartment or dormitory with roommates,
• getting married.
  

Notice that I don't include going to college in this list. While attending college might be part of any of these, the school experience is not fresh enough to give kids the PUSH they need at this time. There has to be an element of challenge and discomfort that comes from moving to a unique setting where they have to think and decide.

I recognize that the discomfort also hits the parents because they have to watch with a certain amount of hands off approach. It can be an incredibly scary time. At best, they have to offer moral support and maybe a little financial assistance, but the trick is getting out of the kid's way and letting him or her muddle through. In most cases, this takes about a year for something fairly dramatic to take place

Of course, there are a few for whom it will take many years because of developmental and or psychological differences, and there are many parents who stymie their kids by being too intrusive or directive which makes the passage take longer. And yes, there are kids who go wildly astray, driven by incomprehensible forces both internal and external. But a large majority of the kids I've watched make their way with only a few tumbles, scrapes, and bruises.

I don't think the "what" is as important as the "how." That's not to diminish the intensity of what parents feel as they try to guide an offspring toward the setting that will accomplish the most effective transition. There are probably several possibilities, but once launched, the work is to breathe while the young person learns to swim into adulthood.

It's as exciting and disconcerting as any other stage of parenting.