Part of the answer is that cheap gestures of good will should not be mistaken for real acts of kindness. People waiting behind you in line are not likely to be impressed by your efforts to cheer up a tired cashier, and people who are trying to read or work do not want to be interrupted by your offer to bring them a drink, and offering to do chores or errands in the wrong way can be as obnoxious as handing people cash on the street. Once in a while I do find it helpful when someone opens the door for me, although most of the time I think that's a quaint courtship ritual going back to the days when (only rich and fashionable) women wore white kid gloves, and men fell all over themselves to protect young women from having to touch a doorknob while callously allowing older women to lug chamberpots and coal-scuttles around. Hello? I don't think I've ever worn white kid gloves. If you're going through a door immediately ahead of someone else, hold it, and if not, no probs--unless it is part of a courtship ritual, or unless the other person's hands are full.
Basically, meaningful practices of kindness require us (1) to go out of our way (2) to do what the other person wants to have done, as distinct from what we might imagine would be fun for us to do, (3) to serve the Highest Good of the other person. (Flattering someone's selfish vanity is, in the long run, an unkindness. Do it if you think you have to do it to keep a job, but never imagine that it's an act of kindness.)
Most of us can think of forty or fifty things we could do that would be acts of kindness, if directed to the right individuals we know. Most of us should do more of those things. What we should not do is misdirect an effort that might have been an act of kindness, if we'd extended it toward one person at one time, toward someone for whom it's not an act of kindness.
Maybe pushing A's wheelchair around the lake would be an act of kindness, because A really loves birdwatching at the lake, and is only going to be a wheelchair dweller for another three weeks or so, and hasn't built up the muscles to push a cheap loaner wheelchair around the lake without help. Maybe pushing B's wheelchair around the lake would be a stupid idea, because B has a motorized wheelchair, thanks just the same...and C is now fully capable of walking all the way around the lake on crutches, and if you mention the wheelchair C sent back last week C might whack you with a crutch.
Maybe D would love it if you offered to scrub and vacuum her house so she can go somewhere with the children. Maybe E would love it if you offered to go somewhere with the children so she can tidy her own house. Maybe F would appreciate it if you offered to pick up things from the store when you go downtown, but doesn't really want to entrust either the house or the children to anyone else, even an old friend.
Maybe G would actually be able to work, walk, even see better if you gave G a good back massage. Maybe H doesn't like back rubs, and the mere idea of someone touching I's back from behind sends I's blood pressure into the danger zone.
What would be an act of kindness to one person you know would be a bad joke or an insult to some other person you know.
Most acts of kindness involve either physical exertion or money. You can always ask your friends, but unless you are a professional-quality singer, are reading aloud to blind people or children, or can do simultaneous translation for people who don't speak the same language, you'll probably get no requests to exercise your mouth. If anything, friends who want "someone to talk to" about their own problems want you to shut up and listen to them.
So where does anyone get this bizarre idea that pulling faces at people would ever be construed as an act of kindness? Not even running your mouth, but just stretching your mouth at people...as an act of kindness? Say what? Do even dentists really enjoy looking at teeth?
Once again this week's news story calls attention to the fact that people do not actually love those who tell themselves to smile. This time, the image on every news site doesn't even feature a big toothy grin, but a big "friendly" smile from a cute teenager who undoubtedly has school friends who'd trade their newest game and most expensive shoes for any chance of being looked at, like that, by him.
Note, please, writers about "kindness," that the boy's beaming face has not stopped his political opponents from posting death threats to him and his parents and sending suspicious packages to his school. The kid was rude, right? Granted the scene was one of those demonstration-counter-demonstration events that unite the city of Washington, D.C., in a common dream of being able to order everybody on the street to go home right now and that means their home and if they're from Kentucky, or somewhere out on the Great Plains, that is where they should go, right now. I lived in Washington long enough that I don't need to watch the video to say whether the kid and his pals, or the older man, was being rude. I know they were all being rude and should have gone home. Marching on Washington is a rude thing to do. No facial expression made these people more tolerant of one another.
When people are in fact friendly, are enjoying each other's company, are singing or laughing together, then the unfaked, unforced expressions on their faces communicate pleasure and good will. This is good. When people are in fact hostile, trying to fake a real smile never works, and communicates a combination of ill will with dishonesty that, as Douglas Adams observes, makes people want to hit their "smiles" with a brick.
Think about it, Gentle Readers. What's the first thing about the famous photo that hit your consciousness? Before you knew which side which one was on, what they were quarrelling about, or what ethnic group the older man identified with, you saw a young person whose physical attitude mixed aggressive confrontation with a big grin of self-satisfaction. Without even thinking about it you wanted to see the older man wipe that smirk off that brat's face, whether with a withering retort or with a brick.When schoolboys have to confront grandfather-types about anything, their body language should unequivocally convey that they're very sorry that you don't realize, Sir, that this life-and-death emergency requires...
Out of curiosity I glanced at a few of the claims that Smiling Boy was "racist." Bosh. No, he wasn't spewing hatewords at the older man. No, he's not been accused of cruising through Black neighborhoods throwing eggs. About the dumbest stunt of which he seems to have been accused was dressing "all in black" to the extent of blackening his face. But he did get up in that older man's face with an expression on his own face that nonverbally says, to an unbiased observer, "I like talking back to older people! Oh clever me!" and that makes it easy to perceive him as a hater.
After watching then-President Bush formally open the Gulf War with a sickly, fish-eyed, toothy grin, I was told that some people force a fake smile when they're trying very hard not to cry. Hello? When the message is "I am sending your husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons into war, over a dispute between foreign countries that interests us only in the sense that we want their stuff, and meanwhile I am going to chill out in Kennebunkport," even bawling like a baby would have been less repulsive than that supremely brickable smile.
Then there was the hurricane that hit the territory of a TV preacher known for looking as toothy as a possum, if not a shark, after which I wrote this little ditty:
https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2017/11/bad-poetry-get-grip-on-that-grin.html
Toothiness is not mistaken for kindness toward people who are really suffering. So why does this bizarre idea, that telling ourselves to smile is an act of kindness, refuse to die?
This post, with which I quibbled yesterday...
https://itsjustlife.me/its-really-quite-simple-be-kind/
...linked to a useful clue:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-kindness-jeff-haden/
To people who need, or might need, a real act of kindness, showing our teeth is ugly and hateful and hypocritical and likely to get our teeth realigned with a brick some day. On the other hand, to sycophants--the even younger girls who undoubtedly have crushes on Smiling Boy, or the fanatical fans of an actor or musician, or people trying to climb the office ladder faster by flattering anyone further up the ladder--the moment it takes to force a fake smile is, well, a crumb of attention! And they want attention! So that kind of people might actually like being on the receiving end of a fake smile...
I say that hypothetically because, as an introvert, I naturally focus on tasks and ignore the little social hierarchies extroverts fabricate wherever they go, and a fake smile, even from the president of the company, is an unpleasant sight and nothing more as far as I'm concerned.
Not that I haven't got into the social act that fake smile is intended to counterfeit. When we are in fact willing to listen to a lecture or enjoy a song, we tend to lean toward and look toward the speaker or singer. If the speaker or singer is disappointing us with a tired, lackluster performance, one way to stimulate per energy is to maintain eye contact, hang on the person's every word, move in synchrony with the person. When you're doing this, if the person notices it and looks at you, you will naturally smile. If the person smiles back, that's a clear message that you've succeeded. Of course the person sitting behind you might have been nonverbally encouraging the speaker too, and might be the real target of the speaker's smile, but who cares? Success is gratifying. If you are in fact rocking out at a concert, it can be more gratifying than membership in the Aunts' Union allows me to mention...
...But, most of the time, trust me: even if you are further up the office hierarchy, if people are doing their jobs, they are not going to feel particularly gratified by your forcing a fake-smile at them. They may flash an eyebrow back, out of politeness, but what they're thinking is "What does that person want? Go away, interruption, go away."
And if there's no hierarchy involved, if you're passing a stranger on the street, pinning on a grin can attract hostility because it might suggest that you think there is a hierarchy and you think you are higher up it than the stranger is. That may account for some of those news stories where some young and/or brain-damaged person "just walked up to the plaintiff, trying to 'be friendly,' and the plaintiff violently..."
Or for the experiences many of us have had, where a self-introduction, sales pitch, appeal for a promotion, etc., generated a withering blast of hostility. Did we imagine ourselves to be so special that we could hand this person a fake smile and expect it to be received as a gift? Who the bleep did we think we were?!
Like many middle-aged people I enjoy laughing and chatting, even with the young, but I don't feel obliged to reward or even tolerate a bumptious brat who thinks s/he is "giving me a smile." You're not giving me anything, brat; you're taking up my time and energy. Speak your piece and go your way! And the way to open a conversation is not a fake-friendly greeting, but a humble, downcast-eyed "Excuse me, Ma'am." I like young people. I do not like presumptuous people. Even the poor dying patients in nursing homes are human beings who've lived long enough that demands for their attention should show humility and gratitude, not bossiness. In a picture of someone over age 70 and someone under age 25, if only one of them is smiling, it had jollywell better be the older one.
Get a grip on your grins, Gentle Readers.
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