Volume VI, Issue 15 April 10, 2017 Word of the Week: kindness Dear ,
I was so inspired by George Saunders's conversation on "kindness" at CPCC last week that,
in an unprecedented move, I am featuring him again in this week's zine, in case you missed hearing it.
(Also, WordPlay friend Leslie Rupracht, who sat next to me at this event and who, like me, also spent time in Syracuse while she was growing up, requested that I put the notes she saw me feverishly writing into the
zine.)
Syracuse is actually a great place to start, as George Saunders teaches at Syracuse University, and his conversation on kindness came into being because he was asked to deliver the convocation speech to the graduating class there in 2013. When The New York Times reprinted his advice to graduates
a few months later, it went viral.
Here, thanks to WordPlayer Mary Struble Deery, whom you'll hear more about in a future zine, is a photo of me with my fellow Syracusan George Saunders.
The Syracuse theme continued when Saunders mentioned that “The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was “mostly Love,
now.”
(And now I digress, to share a blogpost I found by a woman named Deborah J. Brasket that begins with: “Since posting the speech by George Saunders I’ve been searching, without success for the poem he mentions by Hayden Carruth, who late in
life claims he’s “mostly Love, now.” [Poem found since posting this! A kind reader copied it into the comments below]. {Surely, Deborah is a sister WordPlay spirit!}
You can find her post here, and then scroll on down to find Carruth's entire original
poem:
Which leads me to an aim Saunders shared for those of us who would like to be kinder: follow Tolstoy’s advice and “take no action against
another human being unless you are full of love.”
Piece of cake, right? Ha! “… kindness, it turns out, is hard…,” Saunders says. On the plus side, it is a “gateway virtue”—it turns out that, to be kind, awareness (being maximally present in our conversations with people) is necessary, and so is a quiet mind. Thus, meditation is a way to become more kind.
According to Saunders, it
would behoove us all (my expression, not his) to practice “basic rhetorical hygiene”:
- to keep an eye out for times when we are "projecting," which is when, in the absence of hard data, we make something up,
and
- to, when we notice that we are projecting unfavorable attributes, including, but certainly not limited to, political beliefs, onto people we hardly know (rather than interacting with them with kindness in the present moment), step back and ask ourselves, “How did I come to think this?”
This works with characters and readers as well as in real life, Saunders shared. How does kindness show up for him as a writer?
Well, for one thing, he says, "the gods of fiction don't like projection." If you write, say, "'Bob was a jerk,' the gods of fiction will ask, 'How so?'"
And if you answer that by saying that he slammed his money down while paying the Starbucks barista, "the gods of fiction
will ask, 'Why do you think he did that?'"
And what you may end up with is that Bob's wife died six months ago, and it just so happens that the Starbucks barista uses the same kind of shampoo as his deceased wife, and the smell of it completely undoes him. So... Bob goes from being a jerk to a loving, grieving
husband. (Can you feel the kindness here?)
For another thing, Saunders operates from a belief that his readers are at least as smart and talented as he is. "Repeating, saying things readers already know—insults readers." In fact, Saunders says, the writer should strive for a troika between writer,
reader, and character, a “respectfest.” Inject this respect in the editing stage of the process.
His example? Say you start with a sentence: "Bob came in the room and sat down on the brown couch."
If you respect your reader, you'll look at that sentence and ask, Well, if he is sitting down on the brown couch, do you need to have him come in the room? No. So you now have "Bob sat down on the brown couch." You've saved your reader 50% of her time.
Then, you may ask, do you need "down" if you have sitting? No. Now you have "Bob sat on the brown couch."
Next, you may ask, is the "brown" important? Could it just as easily be a red, or
green, or purple couch? Yes. Thus, "Bob sat down on the couch."
And, come to think of it, do you even need the couch? No.
"So what you now have is 'Bob.'"
This is funny, yes? And it also sheds the bright light of truth and understanding if you've read any of George Saunders.
Not to mention that it makes me realize that if I respect you, which I do, I'd best stop right now and pray that these notes of mine will open up something for you in your writing and in your life!
May your week be filled with kindness given and received...
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More WordPlay opportunities here. Photo courtesy of https://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/george-saunderss-advice-to-graduates/?_r=0 Featured Writing
An excerpt
from
A convocation speech for Syracuse University
by
George Saunders
Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness
I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than try to be kinder.
In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class. In the interest of confidentiality, her name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s-eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on
it.
So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded
of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear. After a while she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth.
Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.
And then – they moved. That was it. One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.
End of story.
Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her. But still, it bothers me.
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?
Those who were kindest to you, I bet.
But kindness, it turns out, is hard — it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, everything.
WordPlay Now! Writing
Prompt This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and
potential of one good word after another? This week, it's "kindness."
PROMPT: Write about a "failure of kindness" by you, someone you know, or one of your characters. (Be sure to read George Saunders's speech first for his example of "Ellen.")
And then, write about a "success of kindness." When did kindness win out in an interaction between you, someone you know, or one of your characters and another human being?
MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and three collections of poetry, Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. One of her long-held dreams came true in July of 2015 when Garrison Keillor read one of her poems on The Writer's Almanac. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with
intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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