The Kindness You Do Not Have to Perform For
By H.R. Zimmerer
You may have arrived here in the middle of a perfectly decent day. Perhaps you were curious, or had a few unclaimed minutes, or simply wanted to read something. I like leaving room for that. You should not have to be in pieces before a little kindness is allowed to be for you. Company can belong to an ordinary afternoon as readily as it belongs to a difficult one.
I do not know the exact shape of your day. There may be something you are looking forward to, something you keep forgetting, a conversation still following you from room to room. You do not need to put these things into a presentable order before you read. There is no question waiting at the end that will establish whether you deserved the attention. You can arrive with a life still happening around you.
That is something I value in the kindness people offer one another, too. The patient person does not always require a complete explanation before making a little room. You can pause before you have found the right words. You can be pleased about something small without having to make it significant. You can be quiet without immediately being asked to account for the quiet. A little ease enters when every part of you does not have to be translated on demand.
Some of the most affectionate moments are almost difficult to report. Someone waits while you finish a sentence. A question is asked without hurry. You are allowed to enjoy the good news before the conversation turns to what you should do next. Nothing exceptional has happened, yet you leave with the feeling that your experience was allowed to occupy its actual size. You did not have to make it more dramatic to be heard.
I would like kindness to have that range. It need not concern itself only with pain. It can be interested in your enthusiasm, your peculiar sense of humour, the subject you are delighted to have found someone else who understands. A person who cares about you can make room for your happiness as well as your difficulties. There is a particular warmth in being received when you have brought nothing but a story you enjoyed living.
You may also have days on which you do not want advice immediately. You want to finish describing what happened before it is turned into an instruction. Wanting that does not mean you never intend to act, or that every practical suggestion is unwelcome. Sometimes being heard is simply the first part of a conversation rather than an obstacle to the useful part. There is room to understand a little before deciding what should happen next.
Words on a page cannot provide everything a person can need. They cannot replace the friend who arrives, the help that is actually required or the daily care through which a relationship is sustained. What they can offer is smaller and still worthwhile: a few minutes of company, a sentence that makes something recognisable, a voice whose immediate interest is not in finding you deficient. I want to take that modest possibility seriously.
You need not make an announcement about what these minutes have done for you. You can read, agree with some of it, leave other parts, and return to your day. If a line stays with you, it can stay without becoming an assignment. I would rather the writing leave you with a little more room to be a person than another account of the person you should have become by now.
So sit here a moment, if you want to. Bring the good mood as readily as the tired one. Bring the thought you have not finished, or nothing you feel like explaining at all. There can be a form of attention that meets you before it has decided what you ought to do. For these few minutes, I hope you feel the warmth of that rather than the pressure to make yourself worthy of it.
Prose reflection
Sit here a moment. You do not have to tell the story in the right order, or make the ending sound better than it is. There is nothing you need to perform before these words can be for you.
Perhaps you are happy and simply wanted company. Perhaps the day has been difficult in a way you cannot easily name. Either way, I hope you find something here that asks less of you than the rest of the world has asked. A little unhurried attention. The company of a voice that is not asking you to earn its kindness.
READ NEXT
Let Yourself Be Welcomed
You need not make every invitation an audition. On receiving friendship, accepting hospitality and allowing yourself to be welcomed.
A Little Less Hurried
On the quiet generosity of patience, and helping someone without making them feel smaller for needing it.
