New Year's Resolution: Being Kind

 HS #126 2026.1.8

 

New Year’s Resolution: Being Kind

 

Those who know me well would likely agree that I have a quick temper. So, many years ago while in Hope College’s Mathematics Department, I told my colleagues and office staff that my New Year’s resolution was to avoid saying anything out of line, and that, to motivate me, I carried a $10 bill in my wallet to give to the first person I snapped at. 

 

Unintended consequences. After a week or so of successfully showing my good intentions, the $10 became a booby prize because it demonstrated that some unlucky soul had done something so egregious that they had thwarted my best laid plans. Gladly, I have forgotten who won the prize. 

 

However, being kind to others may not be a bad resolution for all of us to attempt. I see admonitions to “Be Kind” with increasing frequency. A friend has as his email signature line, “If you be anything in life, be kind.” Schools and churches put it on their outdoor signs. 

 

I remember a quote from a Reader’s Digest, “Today I may have sacrificed truth for kindness, but that doesn’t greatly concern me, because I’m more sure of what is kind than of what is true.”

 

 NPR recently carried a story explaining that being kind to others leads to a better, longer, and healthier life. 

 

The reason is easy to understand. Kindness prevents unpleasant situations and promotes harmonious living. Who gets hurt when we are kind? Last fall, during the Grand Rapids Art Prize, an exhibit in DeVos Hall stated, “We all do better when we all do better.”  Don’t we all do better when we are all kind to each other? 

 

In fact, admonitions to be kind reach back millennia. Being kind to others is certainly a corollary of Jesus’s “Golden Rule” to treat others as we want to be treated. And even the ancient Stoics included kindness as one of their principles to live by. 

 

Yet, if we’re going to get philosophical about it, let’s include Aristotle’s Golden Mean. Aristotle wisely cautioned us against taking anything to the extreme. 

 

But, hey, what balance is needed in being kind? Well, let’s go back to the above quote from the Readers’ Digest. Yes, perhaps it IS easier to determine what is kind than what is true, but isn’t truth sometimes so important that it’s worth the risk even though compromising kindness? 

 

In similar spirit, my hero Teddy Roosevelt once said, “If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.” 

 

 Years ago, the Hope College student newspaper, The Anchor, carried a letter from a student disgusted with the destructive antics of his fellow students. I had a few thoughts to contribute, but figured that any lecture from a professor would be dismissed immediately by the offenders. So I wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter defending the juvenile behavior in the hope that, by the end, they would realize I was poking fun at them. 

 

Unfortunately, my subtle approach succeeded so well that I got several letters from faculty and administrators chastising me for my remarks. Telling my fellow-faculty racquetball partner about it later that day, he replied with words I’ve never forgotten, “You hate you always err on the side of caution.” 

 

Indeed! Yes – that is my life motto – he hit it!  It’s easy to “play it safe” in life. To keep out of trouble by not taking chances with people. And being kind to others MAY be motivated by avoiding risk. In fact, there is a descriptive phrase heard here-abouts, “West Michigan Nice” describing the avoidance of conflict by eschewing substantive discussion. 

 

Instead, the worthy challenge is to be kind in a substantive, even sacrificial, way that cares for the other person, while treating them with the respect which may include honesty and risk. 

 

Are you familiar with the Antarctic explorer, Earnest Shackleton, whose ill-fated voyage caused him and his men to abandon ship and trek back home over the ice-covered continent? His trip is detailed in the riveting book, The Endurance.  In Munising MI, I met the daughter of the only American on that venture. He told her of “shenanigans” by Shackleton and the officers when they all drew straws to determine who would get the warm fur-lined sleeping bags. It “just so happened” that ALL of the good bags were drawn by the sailors, leaving the poorer bags for Shackleton and the officers. 

 

THAT’S kindness - that’s kindness that is sacrificial and that matters.