Growing up as an only-child for the first 9 years of life, I was the apple of the eye at home. I was pampered but not spoilt silly. Kindness was taught and practiced everyday at home. Animals and humans were respected esp those who were less fortunate than myself. Giving was a way of life.
I left home at 17 to join college in a different city. The boys hostel was a case study of variety is the spice of life. Students came from all walks of life – from vernacular medium village school kids to metropolitan denizens living in skyscrapers of Dubai and New Delhi. The exposure to this diversity was a rude shock. My giving nature became a handicap in these circumstances. I became the cooperative bank that lent money to the rich and poor hostel mates. An after-lunch smoke, taking their girlfriend for a date and some cats who needed their high – everyone came to me. Lending converted to donation. The money lent never came back. My monthly budget and planning got strained. I ended up being broke for the latter half of the month. . I learnt new ways of operating in life and changed to become a matcher. You scratch my back and I scratch yours.
The journey of matcher lasted until my mid 30’s until I met my wife. She is an outrageous giver. Her giving nature made my gears grind in our initial years of marriage. We got stuck at home with the COVID Pandemic of 2020 and her giving nature throttled to Afterburner mode – helping the maid, vegetable vendor, society watchmen, fellow colleagues and strangers. Around this time, I was going through a change of job and function. Started reaching out to my network on LinkedIn and phone contacts to help me find new roles. Numerous people responded with enthusiasm and then ghosted away to oblivion. People had seen my message and the numerous blue tick on Whatsapp were staring at me in vain. Some of these people were the ones I had helped in the past! The matcher in me was angry. Reply with a yes or no! or Sorry, your profile doesn’t match for the role we are hiring. After months, I found a new role in a global pharmaceutical company and shifted function to a new domain and identified with toddlers starting school in kindergarten. New faces and a new role, it was scary AF. Few months later, COVID lock-down shifted us indoors and I was exasperated with the work from home in my new role. My wife asked me to be kind to myself. Slowly but steadily, kindness won. As the months passed, I was handling more responsibility at work and felt confident.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to hire for a new role. The role was for a specific industry and required relevant industry experience. The JD was ready and I created a post on LinkedIn. My inbox was flooded with resumes. None of them had relevant industry experience. A couple of emails had me in bcc which meant one template email was sent to multiple hiring managers corresponding to multiple roles. I smirked at their lackadaisical attempt to get a job.
Nonetheless, I replied with my feedback to every email I received on why I wouldn’t take their resume ahead and wished them luck with their job search. Took me less than 30 seconds to reply to each of these emails. I hit “send” and moved on with my life. Over the next 2 days, each one of them sent me a message that transmitted the spirit of “Thank you for your feedback. No one replies to my covering email”. Sure! They would have continued to hunt for new roles after my feedback. Perhaps, I was the only one who didn’t ghost them! It was nature’s way of reminding me that kindness is appreciated.
My point is kindness is a choice and this choice of kindness is agnostic to the circumstances. It does not make you soft or weak. In fact, kindness in tough times requires strength. The kindness shared by my family and my wife hasn’t waned. The kindness languidly infected me.
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