[Lifestyle] Why we all need to be a lot less hesitant about being kind

[Amaterasu イタチ]

 

One winter’s morning I was cycling to work when I saw a man in flip-flops and shorts walking fast in the opposite direction to me and calling out the name “Lola”. It seemed strange that anyone would be out in this freezing weather in those clothes, but I cycled on without thinking any more about it. Suddenly the cars in front of me screeched to a stop as a little terrier ran across the road. A woman in a raincoat called to the frightened dog “Poochy, Poochy!” Again, I cycled on, wondering why she had let her dog off the lead on such a busy street.

I’d been cycling for another 10 minutes when I worked out what I’d witnessed. Of course! The little dog wasn’t called Poochy. She was Lola. She didn’t belong to the woman in the raincoat but to the man in flip-flops and shorts. Clearly Lola had somehow escaped and the man was searching for her.I could have cycled back and helped restore the dog to its owner. That would have been the kind and thoughtful thing to do. But I didn’t. I cycled on.

This incident is recorded in the diary I kept while I was working on my book on how to be kinder, and illustrates a common issue with kindness: that we’re often hesitant to do the right thing. I don’t consider myself to be any kinder than anyone else, but in this case, the reason I didn’t go back wasn’t because I was being unkind or thoughtless. Rather, I was worried about how my intervention might be perceived. If I cycled back to the woman in the raincoat and tried to take the dog from her, claiming I knew who the owner was, would she think I was trying to steal it, since I didn’t actually know him? I also excused myself from acting by telling myself that other people had probably stepped in to help by now. Wouldn’t it perhaps be embarrassing to speed back up the road, just as the man in shorts was reunited with Lola?

I comfort myself with the thought that my hesitancy in this instance probably didn’t really matter. The dog was safe, the chances are that she was microchipped and Lola and shorts-man were hopefully reunited. But I might have saved him some time and heartache.In my book, The Keys to Kindness, I draw on the world’s largest in-depth study into kindness, the Kindness Test, which I worked on with a team led by Professor Robin Banerjee at the University of Sussex and launched on BBC Radio 4 in 2021. More than 60,000 people from 144 countries chose to take part. Participants answered questions on their levels of kindness, their perception of the view of kindness in the workplace, their wellbeing, personality, health, value systems and more. One of the findings that most intrigued me was that the chief obstacle to us carrying out more kind acts is not that we don’t care, but that our actions might be misinterpreted. I’d categorise myself as a hesitant helper. I’m no saint, but I want to be kind if I can and yet it seems I’m not alone in being held back by a fear that my offer of help might not be welcome.

 

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