Are You Overwhelmed by Kindness?

My father used to say, “Real men regularly overwhelm someone with their kindness.”

Whenever I think of his words, I always get an image of a big, bushy, laughing labrador jumping onto the bed of his owner in the morning to lick and nuzzle them out of bed. If you have a dog you’ll know how completely adorable that feels to be overwhelmed by the kindness of this beast with his long hair, bad breath, and strangely deep whining noises.

Nowadays, being manly tends to get identified mostly with strength, courage, stamina, and confidence. Kindness seems to get lost in the long tail.

But the quarantine changed that (for some) I think.

The quarantine brought out the best and worst in humanity as all suffering does. It showed us that the human spirit is unbounded by grief and loss and can find hope in the midst of misery. I found many occasions where I read, saw and watched people who were overwhelmed by grief, healed by small acts of kindness. It reassured me of my conviction that while running to get rich, we forget that giving is what actually makes us feel rich.

Today is my clarion call for a kinder man to rise and be known for that more than its tanned, macho cousins.

“Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone.
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.”
― Adam Lindsay Gordon

…Because we are genetically wired for kindness.

We are genetically wired to be kind according to David R. Hamilton (Ph.D.).

Writing in his blog he says; “Of course, we have a survival instinct, and we can be selfish when we need to be, but outside of immediate survival needs, our dominant nature is to be kind. It’s in our genes. There’s strong modern-day evidence that we have kindness genes. Scientists studying different variants of the oxytocin receptor gene found that our natural tendency to be kind was related to which variant of the gene we have.”

He goes on to cite the case for the activation of the vagus nerve in our body to being strongly correlated with compassion. “People with the highest vagal tone (a term a bit like muscle tone, used to imply a healthy vagus nerve) tend to be most compassionate, again a demonstration of the links between genetics and kindness.”

I did some research into this claim and I found that we can all stimulate our Vagus nerve to improve our mental health.

What exactly is the vagus nerve? The vagus nerve is the longest in your body. It connects your brain to many important organs throughout the body, including the gut (intestines, stomach), heart, and lungs. In 2010, researchers discovered a positive feedback loop between high vagal tone, positive emotions, and good physical health. In other words, the more you increase your vagal tone, the more your physical and mental health will improve, and vice versa.

“The vagal response reduces stress. It reduces our heart rate and blood pressure. It changes the function of certain parts of the brain, stimulates digestion, all those things that happen when we are relaxed.” — Dr. Mladen Golubic, MD, Medical Director of the Cleveland Clinic

We can all improve our vagal response if we want to with simple activities like taking cold showers; meditation; deep breathing; laughing; singing; chanting; exercise and even gargling according to some literature.

The point I am making is that kindness and compassion have come built into our genetic and nervous systems. We just have to make it a habit to show it.

Let’s Do kind.

I really like this simple but powerful quote from E. Lockhart.

“Be a little kinder than you have to.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

We tend to be generous with our gripes and frugal with our felicitations. Maybe because we don’t want to come across as weak because we show our appreciation or because we worry that the other person might become suspicious of our motives. Our wonderful brains are wired for suspicion too, we know that. But what if we decided to overdo the vagal response in our lives and see what impact it has around us. As an experiment try to be a little kinder than you have to be. Make an extra effort to show your kindness and compassion. See if that changes anything. Observe how you feel when you say or do something just to be a little kinder than your normal self. Check the immediate effect on your own body and mind. Even before you see the response. It will overwhelm you.

Kindness to others overflows into yourself.

Kindness is often linked to religion and religious practice. But I think it is an act that does not need the robe of religion to be worthy. I really like how Gandhi chose kindness over prayer when speaking to a religion-obsessed Indian junta when he said, “The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”

He is right. Kindness is an act of prayer for someone. But that someone is also you.

The kindest people I know are the most loved in their social circle. They don’t hesitate to offer their time or support to those who are in need. They go out of their way to lend a helping hand or be a shoulder to lean on. Their kindness somehow shows up in them. Like a ricochet of a voice in a valley that resounds like an echo. Encounter with kind-hearted people convinces me that kindness is a road that ends on `Selfish street.’

“Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.”
― Shannon Alder

Kindness can defeat depression

Well, maybe that is me being too optimistic, but it certainly helps alleviate the effects of depression for the time you show or have thoughts of kindness in your mind. Bryan Bushman, Ph.D., writing in the Intermountain healthcare blog calls out this as the №1 coping skill. “Meaning: Find small ways to be of service to others.”

Going out of your way to show kindness to others can be a powerful tool to loosen the self-centered default mode network (DMN)system in our brain. I am sure you have enough instances in your own life when you have distracted yourself away from your anxiety or misery by being charitable to someone else like your dog who loves you for taking him out for a walk. We are wired to be kind so that we may oppose the polarity of our self-obsessive self that wants to survive. We need the balm of kindness to calm the sores of our own strife.

Coda:

We are genetically encoded to be kind to ourselves by being kind to others. It has so many benefits for us and those we love. It’s simple but maybe not easy. But if you are a man reading this- It will make you more of a man. And if you are a woman it will make you more wonderful. So don’t hold back.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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