Kindness is a practice
“Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things… When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 5 (trans. Elizabeth Carter, 1758)
I have learned that the behavior I see in others, and the behavior I show myself, comes from who I am at my core. But it doesn’t reach the world directly. It travels through a series of filters shaped by lived experience: how I was raised, the family system I grew up in, my environment, and the formal and informal education I received.
Having spent most of my career in technology, I think of these filters as programs in a computer system. My inner self is the operating system, but I behave through different programs, and each one governs how I handle a certain kind of situation.
When I’m unkind to someone, it usually means something is getting in the way of me treating them with kindness. And the thing getting in the way is me, 100% of the time. That “something” sits deep in my programming.
I was always taught that we have a choice in how we treat people. I can tell you that isn’t always true, at least not in the moment. In the moment, signals from the world trigger our core programming, and we react before kindness ever gets a vote. The choice often only shows up in hindsight.
Consider a situation most of us have been in. We arrive at a restaurant to celebrate a special occasion with someone we care about. We’ve been planning it for weeks and looking forward to it. We’re shown to our table, and then we sit. And sit. Other tables are seated and served, but no one comes to ours. When our waiter finally arrives, they’re less than apologetic as they take our order.
How many times have we snapped at the waiter, or withheld a tip, because we expected a certain level of service? What builds while we wait? Embarrassment, fear, anger, jealousy. These are all likely, but are those strong emotions really about waiting a few extra minutes?
Back to the computer. Our programs are conditioned scripts. They don’t control the hardware or the other programs directly; they only send requests to the operating system based on the signals they receive. Those signals come from our environment through two channels: emotion (threat or reward) and logic (data and rules). Before anything runs, they pass through a supervisor. The supervisor doesn’t judge whether a program is good or bad. It decides whether running it serves the stability of the whole system. I think of this supervisor as what Dialectical Behavior Therapy calls Wise Mind.
“When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him, and wilt neither wonder nor be angry.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.26 (trans. George Long, 1862)
In a healthy system, Wise Mind would notice the restaurant was busy, it was understaffed, maybe the waiter was new or just a little awkward at handling stressful situations, and decide there was no real threat. The system would stay regulated. We’d respond to the waiter with kindness and some empathy for the night they’re having, and the evening we planned would have a far better chance of going well.
So why is it so hard to stay regulated? Why is kindness so hard to practice, when most of us were taught to treat others the way we want to be treated?
Because the programs run faster than the supervisor. The reaction isn’t a verdict on who I am; it’s a hint pointing to a bug in my programming. When I review my reactions afterward, I find my best opportunities to grow. And each time I catch one, pause, and choose differently, the supervisor gets a little faster.
That’s why I try to be kind because I practice kindness, not because I feel kind every moment.