Thursday, May 22, 2014

Cultivating Kindness

I can be a pretty snarky person. No, no, it’s true. I can be heard saying obnoxious things about television commercials, people on television shows, slow people in Walmart, etc. pretty much all the time.

My girls hear all this and think it’s hilarious.

I realize how awful that is, actually.

Alyssa and I were watching the finale of this season’s Dancing with the Stars (Maks and Meryl for the win!) and listening to Meryl speak made me realize how lovely it is to listen to someone who is genuinely kind.

She’s so soft-spoken and gentle. She comes across as a lovely person. Maybe she’s snarkier when there isn’t a camera in her face, who knows?

Well, I do know that even if there were a camera in my face, I’d be whiny and snarky. Why do you think Tom and I have never auditioned for The Amazing Race? Duh, because when it was over we’d either be divorced or one of us (me) would be dead due to justifiable homicide. The judge would declare it justifiable after watching tapes of my whining to Tom during the race. Seriously.

So as we watched Meryl work her kindness with Maks throughout the season and saw him soften up and become an actual likable partner to her, I said, “She’s so sweet. I should be nicer.”

I followed that up with, “Damn.”

Which Alyssa found highly amusing.

I am not setting good examples here.

But you know what? There is a difference between being nice and being kind. You can be kind in all things while still not being a pushover or a door mat.

I resolve to be kinder. Even when I’m telling the girls to turn off their damned tablets, I can do so with kindness rather than snark.

I admit that I’ll miss the snark a little though. Snark is funny.

But kindness is better. It’s who I want to be, the example I want to set for my girls. I definitely want them to be kinder to each other and I know that starts with me.

On this day, I will start a whole new experiment. I’m going to be kinder. I’m going to approach everything in my family life with kindness. I want to see if kindness is contagious. I want to see if my kindness seeps into Alyssa and Olivia and even Tom. I want to see if a gentler mom/wife can cultivate gentler children and a gentler father/husband.

You know the saying: If mom’s not happy, no one is happy.

Well, I’m hoping to prove that if mom is kind, everyone is kind.

I guess we’ll see.

1 comment:

AiringMyLaundry said...

I try to be kind, but I do have snark. I like the snark.