Midweek pick-me-up: Kindness over fear — poet Naomi Shihab Nye tells the remarkable real-life story that inspired her beloved poem "Kindness"

NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. [View it in full](.  If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, [subscribe here]( — it's free.  Need to modify your subscription? You can [change your email address]( or [unsubscribe](. [Brain Pickings]( [Welcome] Hello, {NAME}! This is the Brain Pickings midweek pick-me-up: Once a week, I plunge into my fourteen-year archive and choose something worth resurfacing and resavoring as timeless nourishment for heart, mind, and spirit. (If you don't yet subscribe to the standard Sunday newsletter of new pieces published each week, you can sign up [here]( — it's free.) If you missed last week's edition — a celebration of Pride Month with the greatest LGBT love letters of all time — you can catch up [right here](. And if you find any solace, joy, and value in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a [donation]( – over these fourteen years, I have spent tens of thousands of hours and tremendous resources on Brain Pickings, and every little bit of support helps keep it – keep me – going. If you already donate: THANK YOU. [FROM THE ARCHIVE (2016) | Kindness Over Fear: Naomi Shihab Nye Tells the Remarkable Real-Life Story That Inspired Her Beloved Poem “Kindness”]( [wordsunderthewords_nye.jpg?fit=320%2C482]( “Let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped,” Carl Sagan urged in his beautiful and timely case for [moving beyond us vs. them and marrying conviction with compassion](. But what does kindness mean, really, and how does it manifest? The measure of true kindness — which is different from nicety, different from politeness — is often revealed in those challenging instances when we must rise above the impulse toward its opposite, ignited by fear and anger and despair. That’s what the poet Naomi Shihab Nye captures with grounding and elevating tenderness in her poem “Kindness,” found in [Words Under Words: Selected Poems]( ([public library](. [5533704b-8a53-4a0e-ad89-a7bd87201b8d.png]( [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]KINDNESS Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. In her altogether elevating [On Being conversation with Krista Tippett]( Nye tells the remarkable real-life backstory that inspired this beloved poem — a story that only lends more potency to the poem’s message: [d196961e-ba17-4d97-b711-ec89be727173.png]( Complement with Ta-Nehisi Coates on [our conditioned resistance to kindness]( Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor on [how it became our forbidden pleasure]( and Einstein on [its centrality in our existence](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Every week for fourteen years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy and solace in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. (If you've had a change of heart or circumstance and wish to rescind your support, you can do so [at this link]( monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now]( [Give Now]( Partial to Bitcoin? You can beam some bit-love my way: 197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7 RELATED READING: [Jacqueline Woodson’s Lovely Letter to Children About Kindness, Presence, and How Books Transform Us]( * * * [Spell to Be Said against Hatred: Amanda Palmer Reads Poet Jane Hirshfield’s Miniature Masterwork of Insistence, Persistence, and Compassionate Courage]( * * * [Leo Tolstoy on Kindness and the Measure of Love]( [---] You're receiving this email because you subscribed on Brain Pickings. This weekly newsletter comes out each Wednesday and offers a highlight from the Brain Pickings archives for a midweek pick-me-up. Brain Pickings NOT A MAILING ADDRESS 159 Pioneer StreetBrooklyn, NY 11231 [Add us to your address book]( [unsubscribe from this list](   [update subscription preferences](