Do Kind

Here’s a multiple choice test. Your next door neighbor still has political signs in their window from the finished election of a politician you opposed. Their garbage cans blew across the street in the storm last night. What do you do? 

A. Chuckle. Do nothing – let them figure it out.

B. Email. Nicely inform them that their garbage cans rolled down the street and could cause an accident – and while you are at it, remind them of local rules about political signage removal.

C. Hustle. Run out the door, drag the cans back to the neighbor’s house. After all, the cans could cause an accident on the street. Say nothing.

What’s your choice?

In a recent post on Lifehacker.com (tagline is “Do Everything Better” – brilliant, no?) titled, Why You Should Be Kind Instead of Nice, the author makes a pretty compelling case why Being Kind is Doing Kind…but Being Nice is not necessarily Doing Nice. As illustrated in the above “B” versus “C” choices.

One addresses the need at hand, and one addresses the words: “Think of kindness as the act that accompanies (or replaces) your words.” In fact, as the article points out, “you can be kind without being nice, and you can be nice without being kind.”

Here’s an idea to jumpstart Kind: In this current atmosphere of heated and divisive rhetoric, how about we just stop adding words, nice or otherwise, and instead look for opportunities to Do Kind?

Of course, Doing Kind AND Being Nice is best of all. But if you have to make a choice, choose “C” above – Do Kind.