Lydia's Essay 18

Lydia Schulz
Mr. H. Salsich
9 English
30 April 2009

A Kind Word:
An Essay on a Poem, a Short Story, and Kindness

        You don’t often hear the words sorrow and kindness in the same sentence. These words are almost always used separately as they mean such different things. But in Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, “Kindness,” she talks about both of these words, conveying them as closely intertwined concepts that go hand in hand. Her ideas about these two words also relate to “Winter’s Dreams,” a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and to my own life.
        Despite the title, Naomi Shihab Nye talks more about sorrow than she does about kindness. She describes the fact that in order to know and appreciate kindness, you must first endure the barren wasteland of sorrow. This gives you perspective about your situation and teaches you to recognize the value of a compassionate(SAT word) action. When you know how bad things can be, you will appreciate a sympathetic gesture that much more. Another subject that Nye discusses is the relation between kindness and sorrow. She describes sorrow as “the other deepest thing” besides kindness, which more clearly defines the relation between the two, classifying them as opposites yet still showing their similarities(loose sentence). Nye thinks of these two polar opposites to be tightly linked in that sorrow often leads to kindness. Although not many other people would make these connections, Ms. Nye depicts them well in her poem, “Kindness.”
        I found many similarities between “Winter’s Dreams” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye. A line that caught my attention from the poem was when Nye said that to know kindness, you must lose things and “feel the future dissolve in a moment.” This must have been how Dexter felt when Judy left him. Dexter loved her and thought they had a future together, but when she left, it was as if he had “seen her fade away before his eyes,” leaving him with nothing (loose sentence). After Judy had gone, the memory of what could have been haunted Dexter throughout his mundane(SAT word) life. Nye writes that kindness “goes with you everywhere,” much like the memory of Judy did after she left Dexter. Dexter, now an empty, reclusive(SAT word) man(appositive), will always remember the woman with whom he came so close just to lose it all. Though Nye writes about kindness and Fitzgerald writes of a catastrophic love story, their ideas in these works of writing are very closely correlated.
        In my life, I see kindness every day. One occasion during which I was treated with kindness was last year, on a bus ride, when I was sitting with Wiley Markham. Wiley and I had always been friendly with each other, but had never talked one on one that often. However, on that bus ride, Wiley talked and laughed with me as if we were best friends, and I will always remember that as the moment I really became friends with him. Even small, kind acts like this one can be meaningful in someone’s life. Whenever I see someone hold a door or help someone carry something, I think about the fact that they did not have to help. No one asked them to lend a hand, but out of kindness, they realized that it was the right thing to do. We may not always realize the compassion people show when they perform these small deeds, but it can make a difference in someone’s day, week, even life.
        A kind act is not always recognized, appreciated, commended, or even noticed(tetracolon). And yet, this is what makes them so noble: the fact that even if no one thanks you, you can feel good about it. Silently leading your peers to be better people, you can take solace in the thought that you did something good today. If everyone did something kind every day, imagine what a better place the world would be.