Kindness and Determination
As the years accumulate, so do the values that steer a life.
Some prove noble, some less so, but all of them quietly shape the road beneath our feet and the turns we choose along the way.
When reflecting on the values that have mattered most in my own journey, two rise above the rest: kindness and determination.
Kindness is familiar to nearly everyone as a virtue, but determination, though just as crucial, is less often named as a value in its own right, even though it stands taller and firmer than its close cousin, persistence.
As a young man, I learned that when I stayed with a task—truly stayed with it—the odds of finishing well rose dramatically.
We have all known people who abandon hard work at the first sign of struggle, moving from one thing to the next until quitting becomes a habit, and that habit quietly writes the story of their disappointments.
I remember my young son wanting to quit his Little League team because his coach rarely put him in the game.
I allowed him to leave, but only after he walked up to the coach, uniform in hand, and explained why; it was the last time he quit something so lightly, and my daughter grew up under the same expectation: you finish what you start.
Over time, it became clear that determination is the hidden backbone of so many successes, large and small.
Without it, talent scatters, plans unravel, and even the best intentions fail to cross the finish line.
Running a close second in my heart, though, is kindness.
I always sensed it was important to who I was, but only with age did I recognize how deeply it defined my character.
It has been a disappointment to learn that some people confuse kindness with weakness, mistaking gentleness for lack of strength.
They sometimes need a firm reminder that genuine kindness often requires more courage than harshness ever will.
When I look at the moral commands I was taught as sacred—honor your father and mother, do not bear false witness against your neighbor, do not steal—I hear kindness woven between the lines, like a quiet thread running through the fabric of a law.
In all my decades on this small blue planet, I have found that the hardest people to treat kindly are the unkind.
Yet they, too, are deserving of kindness, and if I withhold it from them, choosing only the agreeable and the grateful, then my kindness is no longer a virtue but a preference.
My conscience tells me to resist that temptation and keep my heart open, even when it would be easier to close it.
My Methodist faith has taught me that in the end, I will be measured by how I have treated others, and if that is true—as I believe it is—then kindness is not optional; it is essential to a good and honorable life. I once read a line from Jerry Cone: “In religion, faith is a virtue. In science, faith is a vice.”
I am no scientist, so for me, faith and kindness walk together, guiding how I see the world and how I try, in my imperfect way, to move through it.
