As I sat and listened to Mount Vernon Mayor Jill Boudreau give the commencement speech to this year's graduating class of Skagit Valley College the other night, I couldn't help but wonder if she was giving the graduates the wrong message when she spoke on the importance of kindness.
As I looked around the room, I knew that many of those students would be transitioning to their next stages of education and still others were getting ready to join the working world. But the commencement speech was a little off the mark in my opinion.
Mayor Boudreau, who earned her bachelors degree at age 34, expressed the importance of lifelong and daily learning and said that establishing this passion for daily learning would make these students better people. She commended the students for being comfortable with change and for having expanded their brains. She encouraged them to continue being lifelong learners through college classes, workshops, regular library visits and even plain old Googleing.
Sure, everyone can agree with all that, but where I couldn't help but scoff a little was when Boudreau brought up the importance of kindness. She told a story of her grandfather being the kindest person she knew and how he took the trains in search for work during the depression and worked for two meals a day. She said her grandfather studied human nature, was not afraid to fail and was kind until his dying days. He even asked for a cell phone in his 90's -- proving he truly embraced learning, innovation and change. Sadly, Boudreau's grandfather passed away at age 99 last year.
Boudreau went on to say that being kind is successful and that her husband sends her regular kind texts before board meetings that she's able to read like "really good fortune cookies". She encouraged the students to send others funny notes, let someone in when in traffic, resist gossip, coach others when encountered with unscrupulous behavior and let someone know when they have something stuck in their teeth or nose.
Boudreau expressed the importance of resisting quick assumptions, hate speech and the negative emotions that might cause you to shut off your brain and react like animals. She said that kindness pulls us back to our humanity, is attractive to employers and even girlfriend's parents. It restores our dignity and is something everyone can do.
Sure, kindness does all those things, and it never hurts to be nice, but are we forgetting that we live in a capitalist economy that doesn't give a damn about how nice you are? There are only a limited number of good jobs in Skagit County and just being kind isn't gonna get you to the top of that work ladder. You can be the nicest person on the planet, but that doesn't mean the competition isn't gonna be cruel in it's pursuits to step by our kind ass on their way to the top.
I think that if Boudreau REALLY took a look at the big picture and asked herself how she was elected mayor, kindness would be a mere dash in the collective cocktail of traits that earned her the position. Sure, being kind is a nice thing to say about your passing grandfather, and it's easy to write a nice speech filled with colorful anecdotes that will give those in attendance a happy feeling, but to preach kindness to an auditorium filled with eager students joining the working world seems a bit naive and irresponsible.
These students will be entering the most difficult transition of their lives and I'm here to tell you that simply being equipped with kindness isn't going to be enough. Being nice only gets you stepped on. Letting someone merge in traffic or telling your buddy he has food stuck in his teeth, or a booger in his nose, will only get you that much further behind in traffic and a buddy who will likely get the job instead of you. Sure, kindness has its place in our collective worlds, but if you ask me, it's not the message our future needs to rely on.
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