Watch or listen:
Vodcast | Podcast
Kindness takes the wheel in ways most people never notice. I used to think kindness was simple. A smile here, a door held open, a quiet gesture in a loud world. It took a long stretch of miles to learn that kindness can unsettle people who have forgotten how heavy life can feel for someone else. Some laugh at it. Some misunderstand it. Some treat it like a weakness. But kindness has never once failed me, not in any way that matters.
My mother used to say that kindness was courage with its shoes off. She said it while stirring a pot of something on the stove, half her attention on dinner and half on keeping me from turning into a hardened little cynic before junior high. She would remind me that softness is not weakness. Softness is wisdom that remembers what it felt like to need help.
It took me forty years to understand that sentence. Some truths need mileage, and some lessons settle in slowly, the way coffee cools in a diner cup. A few weeks ago on Route 66, I watched a man pay for a stranger’s breakfast. He did not know her. He asked nothing of her. He simply noticed the quiet way she folded her menu like she was holding back more than hunger. When he slipped out, the server pointed to the empty seat he left behind. She looked like she did not know whether to cry or exhale. A small kindness. A big impact.
No one clapped. No one posted it online. No one held up a phone. Kindness is still at its best when no one is looking. That moment has stayed with me like a pebble in the pocket. But as I sat there, the coffee cooling faster than I could drink it, I overheard two people at the counter. One said, “Why would anyone bother doing that? People take advantage.” The other answered, “He must be one of those bleeding hearts.” It was said with a smirk, like compassion was something to be embarrassed about.
Kindness Takes the Wheel
I heard my mother’s voice again, clear as her old kitchen table where she taught most of her gospel. Never let anyone ever make you feel small for being kind. The people who mock kindness are rarely the ones who need it. The ones who need kindness are usually too busy surviving something you may never see. They carry small graces longer than they ever show.
As we move along 2026, a year I am naming with all my heart as the year kindness takes the wheel, I want to plant something here. Kindness is not a soft option. It is not a backup plan. It is not something to offer only when it is convenient or applauded. Kindness is strength with patience. Kindness is courage with good aim. Kindness is the long game.
And I believe the world is aching for it. Not the polished and packaged kind. The real kind. The kind found in diner booths, gas stations, and grocery store lines. The kind offered on rough days, tired days, grieving days. The kind that sees someone before judging them. The kind that feeds the hungry without asking why they are hungry in the first place. If kindness takes the wheel in 2026, then every one of us becomes the compass. One small act at a time. One lifted spirit at a time.
✨ Roadside Reflection:
Kindness is not a trick of personality. It is a choice to stay soft in a world that keeps trying to harden us. When you choose kindness, you are choosing courage, wisdom, and hope in the same breath. Let kindness take the wheel. It knows the way. Never let anyone ever make you feel small for being kind. The ones who need your kindness will never make you feel small. They will make you feel human. And that is the road that always points us home.
Return to all Journal entries | Faith and Good Courage Homepage | Greater Good Science Center