Kindness is easy …until it isn’t

Mandela said, “I believe that in the end that it is kindness and accommodation that are all the catalyst for real change”, which echoes what the apostle Paul said when he insisted that kindness is what leads people to change their minds, which all echo what God said that loving-kindness is better than life itself.

So, it's not surprising that I’ve been thinking again about kindness, as I enter into this new year. It was prompted by someone saying to me just after Christmas what a kind man I was. Of course, I felt flattered and encourage…but not fooled. I don’t consider kindness to be at the top of my virtues.

But I would like it to be.

As I sat in a café overlooking Trafalgar Square yesterday, playing Hide and Seek with my grandkids, (I was hiding here and they were still scouring the West side of London to Liverpool St on the Central Line looking for me).  I was aspiring and asking myself, what it would indeed look like if I had actually become a kinder person by the end of 2026. What attitudes and behaviours do I need to practice more of and less of and maybe just start for the first time. It was in that moment, musing over my latte and journal, that I thought, “It’s really easy to be kind…until it isn’t”. It was easy to smile at the friendly Barista who served me, or asking the guy sitting on his blankets outside Waterstones, who had spent the night in the cold, if I could get him some food. I wasn’t rushing anywhere, I felt happy in myself and the winter sun was shining.

It was the “…until it isn’t”, bit that left me tensing up. A memory had just disturbed the peaceful landscape of my mind. Something related to a thought I’d been journaling about a few moments before. I had recalled an injustice. I felt angry. I felt pain. Did I really feel kindly in that moment? Definitely not. Kindness is easy providing life doesn’t ever step on one of those un exploded landmines sitting quietly below the surface of my conscious mind. The triggers. A comment someone makes, an unwelcome memory of an injustice, an echo of abandonment or disrespect or being ignored or shamed.

My phone was now asking me for a photo clue from my young hunters and I realised they were closing in on me. As I finished my coffee in readiness for the final act, I realised that the most important thing that I could work on in search of a greater quality of kindness in 2026 would firstly to be more proactive about spotting my triggers. Rather than spend another year in denial of them I could name them, list them, face them, and own them. To do that I would need a much more consistent diet of space in each day. The space would allow me to make choices, rather than just react with instinctive responses. In that space I could breathe kindness deep into those kind-alien reactions. The past year has taught me more than ever that making a kinder home for myself including all those triggered parts of me, is fundamental.  Then, maybe, just maybe, when I’m triggered, I will already have found a kinder route through my own inner unkind landscapes and be able to show a kinder response to others in those moments. The triggers, the pains, will probably still be around in 2026, but hopefully so will a little more kindness.