In 2024, I’ve Come To Value Kindness Above All
Photo by Kelli McClintock
(OPINION) The president of the United States has his annual State of the Union address. Mayors issue state of the city addresses.
Wisely, the public hasn’t entrusted me with a nation or even a town to run, but each March I issue an address on the state of … me. I’m the only one I’m really in charge of.
March is my birthday month, and ever since I turned 35 — yes, actually, I was 35 once — I’ve tried to use this time of year to take stock, to evaluate where I’ve been over the previous 12 months, where I stand now and where I see myself going.
Some years nothing much has changed from the previous year, and so my new column — er, the state of my union — is nearly identical to the last one. Other years much has changed, and I find myself contradicting what I’ve said previously.
Here goes for 2024. In a few days I’ll turn 68.
I’m finding that as I age, life becomes simpler. It’s not that the world around me is simpler. If anything, it keeps getting more complicated.
Plus, I’m still pastoring a church and writing newspaper columns, the same things I did before I qualified for Medicare and a Social Security check. I haven’t stepped off into some blissful, unbothered retirement.
And humankind is as freaky as ever, so the freaks I have to cope with on the highway or at the doctor’s office or in political ads are as irrational as ever, if not more so.
What’s changing is me.
I now mostly decline to let irritations irritate me. I’m slowly learning that getting irritated is a choice. Given that irritation expends my energy, and given that my energy is now finite, I choose not to waste much hard-earned equilibrium on minor daily setbacks or on, for want of a better word, numbskulls.
I now pursue peace. Peace with all creation. Peace with other people. Peace with God. But mainly, peace in my own heart.
I’ll be at peace with you if you’ll let me. I don’t care what religion you follow. As long as you don’t wield it as a weapon against others, I say Godspeed. Feel free not to follow any faith at all. I just don’t care. I’m busy enough sorting out my own soul.
I don’t care if you’re rich or poor, Black or White, educated or illiterate. I don’t care what color your hair is or how many tattoos you have. You’d be astonished, and maybe disappointed, at how little I care who you sleep with. I don’t even care who you vote for.
OK, I’m still working on that last one.
But basically, I no longer feel the need to prove myself right. Although, Lord knows, I am. (That’s a joke! Don’t get your undies in a wad!)
Outside of the pulpit and the newspaper, where I get paid for pontificating, I don’t have many opinions about much of anything. As they say on social media, you do you. Que sera, sera.
Aging tends to cure you of the notion that you have one-size-fits-all answers for everybody else. Over the long haul, I’ve been wrong at least as often as I’ve been right; I see that now.
So I’m content to believe what I believe and do as I do and to happily allow you the same liberty.
Oh, there’s this, too: I’ve come to value kindness even more than I value peace. As I’ve written probably too often, it seems to me that about 90 percent of the New Testament’s gospel message could be boiled down to three words: Just. Be. Nice.
I’m trying hard to be nice. I feel disappointed with myself when I fail. Frequently I pray as I leave my house for a trip to the grocery or the post office: “Help me show kindness to whatever bozos I encounter along the way. Help me be especially kind to the bozos, since I’m one myself.”
In addition to dealing kindly with idiots, I try to shake hands with elderly strangers and wink at shy children. When the waitress messes up my order I say, “No problem. If that’s the worst mistake you ever make, you’ll have done well in life.” Then I quietly double her tip.
I’m happy to accept into my spiritual tent just about anybody else who is trying to be kind, too. I’m not speaking for God here; I’m only speaking for myself. This isn’t a theological declaration. I’m not in a place to judge anybody else’s soul, good or bad, up or down.
But if you’re attempting to be a decent human to other flawed humans, you’re good enough for me.
And that’s about it for this year’s state of myself address.
I find that in early 2024, I’m not sad, but I am self-aware. I’m not ashamed, but I am humbled. I’m not saintly, but I hope I am nicer than I once was. The work goes on.
Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.