I am not easily kind. For me, it takes awareness, breathing, slowing down, and a deliberate intention. I almost wrote that I am not naturally kind. That could not possibly be true. I believe we are kind to each other naturally, but learn or train ourselves to be rude, snarky, or cynical. Mostly I was clever-rude, using a joke or word play to win every verbal encounter with another person. It is only now in my elder decades that I am getting more comfortable being kind, helpful, and patient.

The stages of the Hero’s Journey provide you with many places to use kindness as a skill. This is skill that’s really useful and worth practicing until you get better (wielding a light saber-not so much). Your allies and mentors may not be kind to you (that may not be part of their job), but you could always be kind to them–they’re helping you after all. Remember that.

Along the Journey, the Tests and Trials will surely be when it might feel gratifying to be nasty. When I think back on times I’ve not been kind (certainly under duress), after the incident I feel really crappy. Sometimes as quickly as a few minutes later. When I’m kind I feel either nothing or pretty good that I didn’t give in to my snark-monster.

The most important person to be kind to is yourself. Sigh. Sometimes the Journey seems to be taking forever, or (oh, great!) here’s another test, or how come I don’t have an ally to help me here?! The trick, they say, is to speak to yourself like you speak to your best friend or your grandmother.

The counter-intuition is that being kind and helpful to others magically returns that energy back to you. Resolve to hone your kindness skills with every person you meet on your Journey.

I’ve written it many times: you cannot complete a Hero’s Journey alone.

Photo by Ditto Bowo on Unsplash