On being kind

My friend calls me a hater, but I disagree. I’m a lover, I love to hate on things that annoy me.

The other day, I checked my mail and found out I received a rejection notice for a fellowship that I didn’t even apply for. I got the kind “thanks, but no thanks” form letter, the type that makes you suspect that whoever wrote that template is a sniveling little prick with no soul who has received a good deal of similar letters in his or her past and now works part time at Disneyland wearing a Goofy costume handing out balloons while cursing through the plastic smiling mask.

My “wall of shame” from rejected funding opportunities is large, and like my belly, constantly expanding. I do just fine in the rejection department without outside help, thank you very much. Now it seems that rejection is coming unsolicited, attracted by the dank smell of unfundability, and it doesn’t feel good.

Also this past week, my friend’s three-year old daughter, B., has decided in a split second, that she is potty-trained. After months of wheedling, trial and error on the part of parents who fear that they will be changing B’s diaper until she is in her mid-40s, my friends breathed a sigh of relief. Because it is forbidden now to utter the word, “diaper” since those clearly are for babies and not sophisticated ladies, B. occasionally wears what we now refer to as “night time underwear” (also known as diapers). Child psychologists would say this is a developmental milestone as the child is now able to recognize her needs and respond to them with newly discovered levels of awareness and control. In other words, she doesn’t shit in her pants.

All of us are so proud, clapping our eyes, making our eyes light up like fireworks. What a big girl! That’s so great!!! (triple exclamation points, of course). B. smiles, puffs out her chest and revels in praise, sometimes even bringing out her portable porcelain throne when the mood strikes to demonstrate her mad skillz.

When interacting with a young child, we think it’s only natural to praise every small detail of their lives, small achievements, however miniscule it is. Your outfit is so pretty, you’re using a spoon and getting roughly 2% of your food into your mouth, you are being quiet for five whole consecutive nanoseconds. But this type of behavior is not nauseating, but genuine, for both the giver and the receiver. B. graces us with a toothy smile filled with little pointy teeth and we feel bathed in sweetness. Real sugar, not nutrasweet tinged with bitter aftertaste. We do this with babies we don’t even know, for chrissakes, I do this with dogs and cats to an embarrassing degree.

All this made me wonder, at what point do we stop being kind? How do we learn to deny our abilities to give and accept genuine praise?

At the same time, we seem unable to recognize that we, even as adults, albeit adults with the mentality and maturity levels of three-year olds, need this constant affirmation and praise – we need to give as well as receive this. Instead, we learn to drip our words with sarcasm masked as humor, carefully sharpening the barbs and lovingly dipping the ends in poison before burying these weapons in our victims. Even form rejection letters with their copied signatures can hurt.

I started to think about the number of times this week, even today, that I genuinely praised someone without a hint of sarcasm or the inside little mean me inside that actually mimes sticking my finger down my throat when the words leave my mouth. Basically, I came up with nothing.

And then I thought about the number of times that day I tried to insult, hurt or even just used sarcastic, caustic comments and it was like a goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle search.

I certainly am not advocating spreading the good word by sowing happy thoughts like naive Pollyannas who can only see the positive through their red-tinted glasses. In fact, those people annoy me... a lot, with their Volvo station wagons with “Visualize whirled peas” and “namaste” bumperstickers. But I do realize that while kind words are, at times, few and far between, if we genuinely expressed praise more often ourselves to the people around us, strangers and dear friends, we would be in a saner, happier space, at least momentarily.

So I say, from the bottom of my heart, you are a wonderful person, with great insights, a soul worthy of Ghandi and if you ever annoy me just a leeetle bit, I will pull a Zidane and headbutt you onto your bony little ass.