A meditation on kindness

By Mia Pohlman

I recently got to spend a few days in Portland, Oregon. The word I would use to describe Portland is "kind." Portland is kind and open.

I noticed this, especially, in three instances: people engaged with me, smiling, saying hello and asking questions on the sidewalks and public transportation. Each person who exited the back doors of the bus yelled to the bus driver in the front, "Thank you!" as they left. And people who had homes did not hold people who did not at arm's length.

It made me realize: why go through life not acknowledging the people around me? I might as well be kind.

Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson writes that Jesus' greatest desire is to be tender, loving and compassionate with us, the very essence of friendship. During their lives, the saints had a constant awareness of Jesus' friendship and presence with them.

He goes on to write: "Common sense never yet drove a man mad; it is common sense that is thought to characterize sanity; and common sense, therefore, has never scaled mountains, much less has it cast them into the sea. But it is the maddening joy of the conscious companionship of Jesus Christ that has produced the lovers, and therefore the giants, of history."

I love this: kindness is the first step in friendship, visibly communicating to others Christ's desire to be their friend. This made the biggest impression on me with the integration and interaction of people who are homeless into the mainstream society of Portland. There was largely an absence of fear of the homeless; people who had homes interacted with people who did not, treating them with genuine dignity and humanity. And people who did not have homes engaged people who did, also treating them with respect and recognizing a common humanity.

Perhaps I am painting Portland as a utopia; it is not. The number of people who live in unsafe conditions because they are homeless is due in large part to the rapidly rising cost of the housing market, as well as mental health issues and drug and alcohol abuse. It is an amalgamation of serious problems, visible on most streets in the camps made of tents, tarps, belongings and garbage. There is contention among Portlanders about how to solve these issues.

Nevertheless, we could learn a thing or two from Portland, I think, about treating people who are homeless as equals; it's something the city does well. One girl I met from a suburb of Portland disagreed with me, thinking Portlanders are not accepting of the homeless, and she would know, I suppose.

But from my perspective, I witnessed people who had things and people who did not talking with each other on the same buses, sitting in the same parks, enjoying the same sunshine, together. Kindness, I think, is a choice to disregard fear and self-interest, and instead share with someone else, extending small acts of friendship with someone you may never know. It is an act of doing something good for the sake of doing something good, hoping even, that there won't be an opportunity for your kindness to be repaid. It extends to people within our own socioeconomic bracket and to people above it and people below it.

Portland taught me how to be kind.