Kill 'em With Kindness - or Something Like That.

Kill 'em With Kindness - or Something Like That.

• Friday, 2 March 2018

"Nice" is a word with an image problem. It's the forbidden adjective of school English lessons. Say the word out loud and you can’t help saying it with a pathetically sarcastic grimace: Oh yeah, the food was nice. The bar was nice. It was all very nice.

But I'm desperate to reverse the stigma of the word. Really, what's wrong with being "nice?" When did it become so uncool to be kind?

Doing something kind can take as little as seconds, and yet somehow, in fast-paced, do-it-now digitally demanding cultures, our days are so busy busy busy that they require our undivided attention just to remain operational. The exhaustive pace of life means we have to be reminded to leave our desks every hour so our legs don't seize up. We have to be reminded to take a lunch break (or be surgically removed from our monitors.) We have to be reminded to keep our phones away from our beds to promote healthy sleeping habits. Sleeping? Eating? Once-wonted parts of our daily lives get shaved away in competition to work longer, work harder, work better.

I'm not saying that everyone should treat kindness and niceness like the latest fad; it's not like Avocado Toast or a wannabe-hipster-beard. However, I do think that being "nice" needs to have a kind of resurgence.

The need to exercise a kinder mentality has been on my mind for a while now. But, like many others, sometimes I'm just a plain old grump. I'm tired and I'm busy and I don't want to give up my seat on the tube, nor do I want to wait in the freezing cold just to hold the door open for someone dawdling behind.

I think what gets to me is that we actually needed to be reminded of this very human, very normal quality. All you need to do is type into Google: "How to be kind?" and millions of self-help websites and blogs will pop up. Or, you know, walk into an embarrassingly-hipster coffee shop and check out the pink-chalked blackboards.

I recall recently witnessing a heavily pregnant lady, laden with shopping bags, being raced to a seat on the tube on a busy Saturday afternoon. I looked around me to see if anyone was going to get up, whilst said-mentioned pregnant lady grasped the handrail above her head. Everyone studied their phones, newspapers, the tube-line map on the wall, avoiding eye contact. So, of course, I offered her my seat.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

ha

"Thank you so much!" she beamed, "you're so kind."

The compliment made my insides fizz for a few seconds. I'm not saying I deserve a 'Pride of Britain' award for it, but it did make me feel good. And that small thrill is not to be underestimated. I wasn't concertedly choosing to be kind, but the unforced spontaneity - and positive reinforcement - of it all made the difference. I remembered, there and then, that I did have the capacity to be kind. And so if I do (on the moist Central line where it's so easy to be a grump), then shouldn't we all?

I'm all about creating a culture of kindness, especially in a city where people squint at me as if I need shock therapy when I smile at them in the supermarket. Being nice is hardly a task like getting your five-a-day; it ain't that hard. Make it a habit and your own levels of happiness will exponentially increase. And if that's the fulcrum of a harmonious community, then I'm all for giving it a go.