[usr 3]
Kath Koschel’s KINDNESS has a simple premise. It is, as the blurb says, both a memoir and a call to action for the importance of kindness. This book is divided into 14 chapters, most with experiences from her life that illustrate the importance of traits like ‘gratitude’, ‘mindfulness’, or ‘perspective’, etc. The idea is really good, and a call for all to be kind is more essential than ever as the world becomes increasingly disconnected.
And yet, I am about to be that person who knocks down a book about being kind, and trust me, I feel terrible. This book is really important. Kindness begets kindness, and the more people are able to find the strength to be kind to those who are difficult to be kind to, the better the world will be. This is a belief that both Koschel and I share deeply. As we get older, kindness becomes more complicated as we attain the ability to choose who deserves our kindness.
Does someone who hurt us deserve our kindness? What about someone who holds problematic beliefs that aren’t aligned with mine? Would I be condoning them if I were kind to them? What about when I thought I was being kind but it wasn’t taken that way by someone else? Koschel’s book is an exploration into what exercising true kindness to everyone would foster – trust, gratitude, perspective, all the essential ingredients that make a life feel worth living and a happy, connected society.
What is the problem then? It’s boring. I feel awful saying it because Koschel has had an incredible life, but even the most incredible of lives need the polishing of good storytelling. To be fair to Koschel, it is clear that she was more motivated to write about kindness than to write a story about her own life – she uses her own experiences only to illustrate the importance of kindness. But the result is formulaic, “this happened to me, I did this, this is what I learnt’. Rinse and repeat.
KINDNESS has strong notes of ‘high-school motivational speaker’, something that I only found interesting as the alternative was class. As an adult, with free choice over whether to read this book or do something else? Unfortunately I just kept choosing to do something else.
