The Surprising Way Kindness Counters a Chaotic Life

Why cultivating "instantaneous generosity" is so important for modern living.

I’m going to confess something: I haven’t really felt like I’ve been “in deep time” lately. Quite the opposite. These past few weeks, it feels like I’ve just been living in between networking meetings, workshops, career fairs, writers’ groups, and doctor’s appointments.

I usually start off my morning with a ten-minute silent walk where I don’t listen to music or podcasts and just absorb the world around me like a sponge. It’s probably one of the few moments in my day where I can consistently be “in deep time” no matter what happens the rest of my day.

But these days, I feel like I’m just killing the ten minutes of time until I can finally load up the new podcast I got hooked on. When I keep an eye out for cute autumn leaves or little heart shapes on the sidewalk, I don’t linger as long as I typically do.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I don’t feel as present to the world around me. Even when I’m reading a good book or watching a TV show, my eye is always itching to check the clock. It feels like it’s hard to resist the pull of doing “too much” and trying to overload your day with things. Even as I consciously get better at weeding through my inbox for the things I really care about, somehow, more good content finds its way to my inbox. The algorithm recommends more YouTube videos or more in-depth podcasts to check out. More networking events.

More. More. More.

So when I showed up to my writing session with a friend today, I wasn’t super enthused to write. What could I possibly have to share on being “in deep time” when I felt like the walking antithesis of Oliver Burkeman’s philosophy on living well?

(For those who are new to this Substack, I’m following the ten recommended guidelines for living “in deep time” in Oliver Burkeman’s brilliant book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Each week, I’ll publish a new post focusing on one of the time management principles and how well it worked (or didn’t work) for me.)

But when I flipped to the penultimate lesson in Burkeman’s book that I’m supposed to be focusing on this week, I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be, doing exactly what I needed to be doing. No eye on the clock. It felt like I was inching a little closer deep time.

Lesson # 9 - Cultivate instantaneous generosity

In this lesson, Burkeman cites the teachings of meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein. Burkeman advises, “Whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind…act on the impulse right away.”

Have you ever thought about donating to a charitable cause but decided to put it off until you had done more research and figured out the “best” way to make an impact, whether that’s donating to a GoFundMe or an internationally recognized big NGO, or a smaller local nonprofit?

Or maybe you thought about complimenting a stranger on their outfit but didn’t know if that would be too weird? Or maybe you thought about reaching out to a casual friend you hadn’t chatted with in a while and told them you were thinking of them and wanted to catch up — but wondered if maybe that was too personal?

I used to feel this way. And it seems like a lot of other people can relate. In the book The Laws of Connection, the author, David Robson, discusses how often people think generous thoughts but withhold them by not sharing those compliments with the recipient.

But in recent years, I’ve made a mental transition. Because of health issues — my own and those of family members — and the pandemic, I’ve been brutally confronted with the reality of the finitude of my own life.

I will die. I don’t know when that will be. It may be two days from now or two years or sixty.

I don’t want to die thinking of all the nice things I left unsaid, knowing how they could have brightened someone’s day. I don’t want to withhold money that I have just so I can order Ubereats for the third time this week when I know I’d get exponentially more happiness from donating to humanitarian relief than from an extra serving of Pad Kra Pow.

That’s not to say you should donate every last cent in your bank account until you’re penniless. And being between jobs and freelancing, I can’t afford to donate to every cause on my mind, so I focus on the ones that matter most to me.

So, I donate nowadays to GoFundMes and mutual aid accounts, even if they’re not “properly vetted” organizations with clout and reports on their website. I donate because I see these folks doing good in their community on social media — whether that’s dropping off water for unhoused folks in LA or people cooking hot meals for displaced folks in Lebanon — and I understand that my money will have an impact. I donate instantly when I become aware of the opportunity because I know that if I hesitate, it will just become one more tab on my computer that I ignore until my computer inevitably crashes and shuts it down.

When an old grad school friend shares something she’s written, I share it on my social media, even if we haven’t chatted in ages. When an author whose newsletter I follow announces pre-orders for her new book, I request for my public library to order the book (a great way to support authors if you can’t afford to buy many books, FYI!), even though she doesn’t know I exist.

I used to think going out of my way to do these nice one-off gestures was “weird,” but then I justified it by saying, “Well, I hope someone returns the favor for me one day.” To quote Lana del Rey: “I believe in the kindness of strangers."

Photo by Melanie Lim on Unsplash

But now, if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t care if someone returns the favor one day. I do these things simply because this is the kind of human being I want to show up as in the world.

And it’s easier for me to be this kind of human being when I savor my life and strive to live in deep time instead of frenetically rushing from moment to moment with my eye perpetually on the next item on my to-do list until I can finally pass out in bed at the end of the day.

Today, while taking my walk, I saw a man sitting on his porch with a group of friends. He held up a slow but assuring hand to wish me good morning. I noticed this man offered the same greeting a few months ago when I took a walk around his block. I suspect he does the same thing for any other human who passes by his porch every day at 7:30 a.m.

Instantaneous generosity in action. What a gift to the world. I lifted my hand and gently smiled back.