My maternal grandmother, a huge influence in my life, was a strong Christian. 

She lived by The Golden Rule and seemed effortlessly to demonstrate that rule, treating others at least as well as she hoped they would treat her.

She impressed upon me that I would do well to apply that rule early on. 

A practical woman, she said that for one thing, it takes less energy to be kind to people than to be mean.  (She couldn’t have been mean if she’d tried.)

“You know, sweetie,” she said, when I was quite young, “You’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar!”  Um, sure, Grandma, I thought.  Flies? Honey? Vinegar? 

I really didn’t understand why we were talking about flies, anyway. But I loved my grandmother so much that she could have told me almost anything, and I would have taken her word for it. (Of course, eventually, I understood the thing about flies and honey and vinegar!)

My friend Carol, who during our friendship evolved from being a ski instructor into being a Lutheran pastor, quite likely still uses a technique she labeled decades ago.

When people showed negativity, treated her cruelly or spoke harshly, “I just ‘out-nice’ them,” she’d say to me, with a grin.  “I just ‘out-nice’ them.”

I think of Carol every time I act overwhelmingly pleasant when someone is acting unpleasant.  (I think sometimes they would like to slam a door on me, but they do tend to lighten up, at least a little.)

The thing she taught me is that if I treat people kindly, politely, warmly—after they have practically dragged me down with their negativity, it costs me nothing. And it might help their day, a little, though it will not change them unless they choose to change. 

So I smile, ignore their sourness and “out-nice” them.

It is possible that kindness is sometimes overlooked these days.
There’s something about the frenetic pace of life that causes people to dash right over the feelings of others, bent on getting where they are going, already late:  The meeting running overtime. The traffic crawling. The baby howling in the car seat. The cell phone ringing interminably. Tension upon tension.

And then a shopper at the grocery store pays it forward for the elderly man next in line.

The tollbooth operator tells the driver that his toll has been taken care of by the driver ahead. 

The harried woman in line at Starbucks discovers that her latte is compliments of the girl who just walked out the door. And the teen-ager engrossed in his music suddenly stands and gives his bus seat to the tired waitress, finally headed home from work.

Many years ago, American author Henry James said, “Three things in human life are important.  The first is to be kind.  The second is to be kind.  And the third is to be kind.” 

At this moment, I cannot think of anything to add.