The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love
William Wordsworth
The power of a good quote to inspire has always been important, but it seems to me the potential for a few well chosen words to reach us in the white noise and mental clutter of life as we now know it has diminished dramatically.
First off, there is the cultural arrogance of our times in which language has been so politicized that it’s far more common to poke at words on the run, looking over our shoulders to see if the mob deems them incorrect, than to sink into a private reverie and let the deeper meaning of those words reach us.
Take the Wordsworth quote above: I chose it to open this blog because my sister Jan, in whose memory I’m writing this weekly blog, loved Wordsworth, and also because our Wellstone Books summer intern Danielle Lerner liked it and sent it to me. And yet, these beautifully simple and powerful words from a poet born in 1770 might be dismissed by many a contemporary reader who chokes on the fish bone of “a good man’s life,” rather than “a good person’s life” or a “good man or woman’s life.”
One reason many formulaic contemporary animated movies are unwatchable for me (despite airlines’ insistence on showing them) has to do with language: a heavy emphasis on fashionable, faux cool language like “I get it” and “Really? and “Don’t go there,” as if it’s always 2014. We rob ourselves of the ability to have language truly enrich our perspective if we dip too often into shorthand-for-real-conversation tics.
So I say, why don’t we all spend a little more time thinking of great quotes that stand the test of time, and try to share those with others – on the phone, in person, even via social media. Words don’t have to be run over a conveyor belt and scanned by a bunch of TSA automatons, looking for anomalies, they can be appreciated on their own terms, and only that way can they inspire.
Let’s return to the theme of being kind to others, which I think of every day, in part as the legacy of my sister Jan, and in part simply as Sarah’s and my idea of how we want to live and what we want to encourage through our work at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods.
“Kind hearts are the gardens, Kind thoughts are the roots, Kind words are the flowers,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote. “Kind deeds are the fruits, Take care of your garden And keep out the weeds, Fill it with sunshine, Kind words, and Kind deeds.”
Let’s help each other to keep out the weeds and let in the sunshine of kind words and kind deeds. We’ll be compiling as many great quotes on kindness as we can over the next weeks and months, which we’ll publish later this year as The Little Book of Kind, first in a new Wellstone Books series.
Why not help us out and seek to inspire others? Type your own favorite quotes about being kind in the comments section below, and we’ll consider including that quote in the book. And feel free to pass this blog on to others, to give them a little lift, and to encourage them to share uplifting words that are important to them as well.
– Steve Kettmann, co-founder, WCR
Steve’s earlier blogs:
Remembering Those We’ve Loved and Lost
Were You Kind to Someone Today?