the Simplicity of Kindness
Recently, one of my classes at NYU gave me an assignment to attend an event related to gender and sexuality studies (The class is Gender and Sexuality Studies). For the assignment, I visited the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York City, which focuses on LGBTQ+ artists and experiences. Going into the museum, I thought I would look at the art, connect it to concepts we had discussed in class, and quickly write my reflection so I could check it off my extremely long list of things to get done for the day.
Instead, I left thinking about something much bigger: kindness.
The majority of the artwork I saw focused on people creating spaces where they could feel safe, accepted, loved, and free to be their true, authentic selves. Some pieces focused on finding belonging and community, while others explored experiences of discrimination, loss, identity, and grief.
As I walked through the boutique museum, I kept thinking about why people have had to create these spaces in the first place. Why should anyone have to search for a specific place just to feel comfortable being themselves? Why are we sometimes so quick to judge someone because their life, identity, experiences, and/or beliefs are different from our own?
It made me realize how much hate exists in the world that simply does not need to.
We are all human. We all have people we love. We all experience happiness, fear, grief, excitement, and the desire to simply belong. Yet in today's world, it has become easier and easier to focus on what makes us different instead of what connects us (and I would argue there is so much more that connects us than divides us).
I have realized you do not have to fully understand someone's experience to treat them with kindness. You do not have to have lived someone's life to respect them. Sometimes kindness is as simple as listening before judging, including someone who feels left out, and asking someone how they are doing.
That is something I have been thinking about a lot through Chase Light. Our mission centers on bringing people and communities together, and I think kindness is one of the simplest ways to start doing that. Building a stronger community doesn’t always require a huge event or gesture. It can start with how we treat the person sitting next to us.
People will always be different. We all come from different backgrounds, have different experiences, believe different things, and see the world differently. Those differences do not have to divide us.
I left the museum wishing the world could simply be a little kinder. We cannot control how everyone else treats people, but we can control how we do. If more of us chose curiosity over judgment, understanding over assumptions, and kindness over hate, I genuinely believe our communities would be better because of it.
Sometimes bringing light into someone else's life starts with something as simple as choosing to be kind.
-Zara Lateef, Founder
