The Trouble with Kindness

I was not expecting to have such difficulty with my 33 Acts of Kindness project.  Yet it is already April, and I find that I am struggling.

One challenge that I'm running into is that part of my agreement in doing this was to avoid repeating the same act in different situations.  That makes it particularly challenging.  I'll be in line at Starbucks on one of my days home with the little one, and think, Hey!  I know!  I'll buy the order for the person behind me... oh, crap.  I already did that one.

Do you see the irony here?  I'm NOT doing acts of kindness that I would otherwise do because I've done them already and they won't "count" toward my 33 for the year. 

Perhaps this is what happens when people are overly perfectionistic.

I have decided to revisit this entire project.  I will continue to do acts of kindness, even if it's the same one over and over again.  If something new occurs to me, I will do it.  This takes me to my second issue which, oddly enough, was the reason I imposed the "don't do the same thing twice" rule to begin with.

Being kind in new ways can be anxiety-provoking.

It's like being new at anything.  Whenever I attempt to do something that is outside of my comfort zone, it is exciting and frightening all at once.  Buying things for people is a very easy way for me to be kind.  Turning around at a church service to tell a young woman how inspiring and courageous I thought she was for leaving her native country due to the threat of persecution for her sexual orientation was much more challenging.  In a way, it can be fun to challenge myself to do things in a way that is not the norm, and to see what happens.  Often, I find that it opens doors that would have otherwise remained closed, or brings me closer to new people or opportunities that I might not have had exposure to otherwise. 

This activity, the 33 acts of kindness, is interesting.  It's bringing into focus some of the ways in which I sabotage myself and act in excessively self-limiting ways.  It's amusing to see where I get stuck, and amusing to see how I haven't seen it before.  It's also interesting and liberating to see what happens when I do things differently, and how tiny changes tend to have a ripple effect, creating a cascade of increasingly larger changes.  



 

On Heartbreak

Sometimes I find that I have real difficulty in naming what I'm feeling.

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

Let's take, for instance, the feeling of heartbreak.

Over time, I've been able to recognize and acknowledge difficult feelings as they come up, and maybe even name them properly: grief, loneliness, disappointment, frustration, and so on.  I'd thought about heartbreak, and even thought that I didn't have much heartbreak in my life.

My active, present-day journey in starting to recognize and name heartbreak has a few notable markers that come readily to mind.  One that comes most quickly to mind was when I was at the wonderful Ferry Beach Camp and Conference Center last summer and speaking with new friends about some relationship challenges that I had been grappling with over a period of several years.  One woman -- a thoughtful, articulate woman with a rather quiet demeanor but a wicked sense of humor -- broke the silence after I told my story by saying, "it sounds like a situation of almost constant heartbreak."  I studied her face for a few moments before looking down at my hands.  Heartbreak.  It resonated, and I found myself in this place I find myself in so often, the place where I become reacquainted with some feeling that I haven't felt in awhile and get intensely curious about it: hey, what is this?  Where did this come from?  Heartbreak seems like the right word, but what part of what I'm feeling is the heartbreak part?

The concept of heartbreak has shown up again recently, in an online exchange I read about the distinctions, similarities, and relationship between rejection and heartbreak.  Saying that a lightbulb came on would be an understatement.  This wasn't merely a lightbulb moment; this was a veritable I'm-going-to-light-up-a-darkened-room-and-blow-your-mind moment.  My sudden realization was many times in my life, I was able to identify and work through the grief and loneliness that come with social rejection, death, or that drifting apart that happens sometimes between friends when life changes, but I had not successfully identified my feelings of heartbreak.

To help with my understanding, I went to seek some help from all-knowing Google, who referred me to Wikipedia, that lovely pre-research research page:  "Heartbreak may refer to: broken heart, the emotions felt after the end of a romance, or grief or disappointment."  As I went on to follow links and read more, I discovered that I'm not the only one who has had trouble identifying heartbreak -- or other feelings, for that matter -- and that humans can often have feelings they have difficulty naming, or even may not know they have.  I also discovered that what scientists know about heartbreak is fascinating. There is a real "broken heart syndrome" that can cause the tissue in the heart to break down and is seen at times in a person who has suffered the loss of a spouse after many years.  

As interesting to my mind as all of this was (online research:candy store :: Amy:kids), it didn't really answer the question of what one does with heartbreak, or other feelings that are so challenging.  The only thing I know to do with it is to accept it with as much compassion as you can and, eventually, grow from the experience.  I think heartbreak is one of those givens about life in a human body.  I do know, though, that for me, just being able to identify the feeling as one of heartbreak has already gone a long way toward helping me to accept it when it's there, and to move on from it when it's time.