I’ve spoken at length about Frightened Rabbit, a criminally underrated band from Scotland who lost their founder and lead singer to depression and suicide in 2018, and what I’ve said largely centers around a single lyric. In their song “Heads Roll Off,” Scott wrote and sang:
And you know when it's all gone, something carries on
And it's not morbid at all just when nature's had enough of you
When my blood stops, someone else's will not
When my head rolls off, someone else's will turn
You can mark my words, I'll make changes to earth
While I'm alive, I'll make tiny changes to earth
“While I’m alive, I’ll make tiny changes to earth.” This has become, since the first time we heard it, a mantra in the minds of my lovely wife and I. It’s been stickered on our car, it’s been said aloud to countless dozens of friends, family, and it’s been written about more times than I can count. I’ll make tiny changes to earth, this the foundation we’ve built our business, our relationship, our lives around.
At the center of this has always been, and always will be, kindness. I’m not talking about being nice, as there is a clear and very obvious difference in my humble opinion between niceness, and kindness. It’s this distinction that we’ve worked until raw to define, and to do our very best to embody. Niceness is small-talk schmoozing and posturing and grandstanding and false promising and trying your best to come across as a “really great person” and to be almost remembered as a mayoral figure. Niceness is the pretend smile you put on your face when surrounded by people you don’t really care for, only to breathe a big sigh of relief once they’ve gone. Niceness is temporary, it’s fleeting, it’s surface level, and it’s not real. I’m not good at niceness, I never have been, and it’s been a polarizing fact all my life. I am ok with this.
Kindness, is something else entirely, a beast made of different parts, and comes with a very separate list of characteristics. Kindness is what’s left over when niceness has faded, or never bothered to show up in the first place. Kindness is giving of yourself even when you’re not quite sure you’ve anything left to give, it’s showing up even when it hurts, it’s saying the hard things to the beautiful people in your life that need it most, it’s the risk that they might push you away. Kindness says it anyway. If Niceness offers sympathy and hollow hopes that things get better, Kindness is empathy, and it sticks around and leans in until it actually does, Kindness is there when it doesn't, because sometimes, it doesn’t get better. Hell, usually it doesn’t, so kindness is even more vital. Kindness isn’t blowing sunshine up your ass, it’s loving the shadows, too.
Thing is, and it’s not talked about enough, Niceness can shift, can be taught, can be molded and retrained and improved upon. Niceness can become Kindness, can become the first nature that supersedes the second. Kindness can be the default, and they don’t tell you that as you grow up, as they tell you to put on a happy face and grin and bear it and as you learn to small talk about the weather and sports games and inflation and all other surface level nonsensities that skim instead of plunge. How? How you ask? I already told you, Scott already did, two words are the answer, two words he sang a million times over, two words that became a charity that embodies them, two words:
Tiny Changes.
It’s not all at once, not this. You can’t rush a planetary shift, after all. You can’t expect so many betrayed so long with false promises of what actually matters to turn a cheek, to face the new light you’re offering. What you can do is lead the way, is represent, as Gandhi explained, the change you wish to see in the world. This is the starting line, the race is long, but we are strong, aren’t we?
Tiny Changes is the starting block, the flare gun shooting blanks into the air, the smoke that spreads as we race through it. So where, you ask, do we begin? Tiny changes take place in tiny places, in tiny ways, and so I thought it wise to compile a list, brain rained at random, of things I think we can do better, shifts we can make that might not feel significant at all, but I believe with all my heart will lead to seismic alterations, shifts that feel almost tectonic, one day. One day. Let’s go.
Stop competing with your sorrow, with your hurt - Hurting, sadness, aching, sorrow, loneliness, depression, is not a competition, though so many treat it as such. It’s a human instinct to compare our hardships to any that announce theirs to us, and I doubt we even notice we do it. If someone tells you they are lonely, listen, if they say they are hurting, do not compare yours to theirs. Sadness is not a hierarchal creation, it’s a spectrum, so treat those who are on it with tenderness, no matter where you’re on it too.
Assume the best - I’ve found, as nefarious as our brains tend to make people when we’re feeling overwhelmed, angry, or misunderstood, more often than not, the intentions behind the other person were not nearly what we imagined. Assume the best intentions, and begin there, requiring proof to let your opinion or decision sway. If the evidence is there, by all means react appropriately, but as the courts say, Innocent until proven guilty. Try it, it feels strangely liberating.
Let hate fade away - From your language, from your mind, from your heart, in that order. It’s far too easy to fall back onto hatred, even in forms that feel innocuous, hating a song, a movie, clothes that hang in your closet, and it’s far too easy for that hatred to spread, to grow. Eliminate it, slowly, day by day, and watch what happens. If you need further proof, consider that on the topic of hate, dear Buddha once said:
“In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.”(Dhammapada 3-5)
Say it first, say it last - I lost one of the dearest friends I have ever had a few years back, my brother from another mother, Georg “Sven” Tolstoy. He died suddenly and completely unexpectedly in Stockholm, Sweden, and I never got to say “goodbye.” One of the proudest, happiest things that helped dull the absolute devastation even a fraction, was the fact that the very last thing I said to him, our final correspondence, was me saying, “I love you.” The lesson, never, ever, be afraid to say I love you first, and always say it last. There is no embarrassment in love, not ever, and I am so happy that I say it first, often, most, to those I care for. Don’t ever make people guess, if you feel it, speak it. This waters the roots inside you, this makes it blossom.
Slow down - Strange one on the surface, this, but I promise it leads to big shifts both within you, and around you. Slow down, be more present, be more mindful, and just stop worrying so much of time. Let the person behind you go first in the grocery aisle, let someone else speak first, wait until their story is told before you tell yours, then don’t tell yours at all. Slow down, do one thing at a time, break it into its parts and enjoy every step. This new pace will translate, and it’s like reaction time in a car, the slower you’re going, the more time you have to stop before you crash.
Be more compassionate to yourself - We’re hardest on ourselves, holding ourselves to impossible standards, putting ourselves down for the smallest of perceived infractions. We worry about gaining a little weight, about “failing” in everything from our New Year’s resolutions to our career performance, comparing ourselves to everyone we see online living what we think are better lives. Horseshit, this. To quote myself, which is weird I know, but it was damn good advice when I gave it to a friend a few months ago: Do your best, and fuck the rest. If you go to sleep each night knowing you did your very best to be a good person, to give more love, to work on the things above, you’ve done enough. Love that, love yourself, and sleep easy.
Put the UN back in unconditional - No, not the United Nations, the UN, as in UNCONDITIONAL. It’s far too easy to create, even subconsciously, conditions for our kindness. I’ll do this if…I’ll say this if…I’ll give this if…and then the ifs might not come and so we don’t. Be kind unconditionally, and the tough part of this one is, that most often will mean being that kindness when they don’t seem to deserve it at all. Truth is, it’s then, exactly then, that they need it the most.
Think it, Say it - How many times have you had a nice thought about someone, whether they are next to you or not, and then didn’t just say it out loud and give them the compliment? How many times have you worried it’d be weird or embarrassing or that the timing might be weird, so you swallowed that nice thought, that random feeling of love or admiration, and then it abated? Happens a lot my friends, more times than you’d believe, and when it does it denies both you, and the person on the receiving end, a chance to feel really f’ing good. If you think it, say it, and if that means calling, texting, emailing, Snapchatting, DM’ing it, fine. If it means risking the embarrassment of saying it in person, great, do it anyway.
Donate - Your time, your money, your unused or previously used and no longer used stuff, your ear, your advice, your energy, your skills, your calm, your strength. Give it away, tell no one else that you’re doing so, and then do it again, and again, and again. This never means depleting ourselves, it cannot, you know the ol’ oxygen mask on an airplane theory, but it means making more so you are able to. Start small, work up to bigger, and keep it your secret as often as possible.
I could go on, and I’m hoping you could too. In fact, in the comments below, let me know any of your wise, sage-like advice on how to be more kind, how to live a happier life in doing so. I’d love to hear any wisdom you have to offer.
It’s tiny changes, it truly is, Scott knew this, and the avalanche of love and kindness that has followed in his wake is a tribute, a testament to that power. So much time is lost and wasted thinking we’re past some point of no return, and maybe we are, but that doesn’t mean we have to lay down and take it, it doesn’t mean we have to give up. We can make things kind again, and I’ll be damned if that doesn’t sound like a really great presidential campaign slogan. We just need the red hats.
Tiny changes friends. Start now, I’ll join you.
With tiny changes
we can shift the planet’s spin,
make things kind again.
Can We Make Things Kind Again? | 8.11.24