Blogging Book Club

Discussing: The Power of Kindness
Chapter 4: CONTACT - To Touch and to Be Touched

Am I really only on Chapter 4? Ugh.

At the beginning of this chapter the author talks about how we reach our peak of contact at the age of five months. The age that a baby will grace a stranger with a "radiant smile, a gift of happiness," and how that is "contact, in its pure form." At about seven months the baby may start to experience stranger anxiety, and then for a lot of people it's down hill from there.

He also talks about his eccentric friend who was standing in line behind a man that was attempting to scratch his back and she asks, "Excuse me, would you like me to scratch your back for you?" Most of us would probably not do that, but she was not afraid of contact.

I liked this quote in the book; " But our lives are poorer without the nourishment that these people can give - nourishment in the form of stimuli, different points of view, fresh emotions." He was talking about people that decide to keep their distance from others. He gives some reasons why some do like to keep their distance, "we feel inferior and other people appear to us as better and more intelligent; or we feel superior, and we think contact with others is a waste of time." To the we feel inferior comment, I heard this somewhere, "if you are letting someone make you feel inferior remind yourself that they have to sit on a toilet and poop too." Weird I know, but in a way, helpful. :)

The author talks about how extroverts have advantages in making contact with others, that it can be a talent, knowing the right things to say, feeling at ease. But, he said we should be open to contact, "It is an attitude in which the other is seen as a window to a new world, a way for us to grow."

The author talks about being fully present. "In encounters with another, we often use some reassuring prop: to be well dressed, for example, or to have an impressive professional role, or to be in touch with an important person, or to have in hand the latest model cell phone. Such aids reassure us and might appear to facilitate interactions, but in fact they reduce its quality. They distract us from what really counts." He asks why we use them, and answers his question with, "we feel naked. We are exposed, defenseless. All we have is our being... so, we protect ourselves with roles, masks, and other props."

"Contact is a door through which kindness can flow." "You find an attitude that makes you feel that this person is right there, just for you. That you are her or his priority at that moment. That you count." I'm going to have to be honest with you, I don't think I am very kind sometimes. Sometimes when I am talking with people, they aren't my priority at that moment, and I don't like trying to pretend that they are. But, I want to be. I want to be genuinely interested, and I want them to be front and center, but I'm not nice like that. My mom was. One more thing to aspire to, I guess. I don't ever remember being able to notice when my mom was talking to someone being able to tell that she didn't really want to be, but there had to be times, and maybe she was just a really good faker. But, I think she was genuinely interested, and cared about people enough to be willing to stop and listen. For a woman that had teeny feet she left a pretty big footstep to try and fill.

Closing with a quote, of course, "Right in the midst of everyday life we are given the chance to touch the lives of others and thus change the world."

We change the world and ourselves. When we make meaningful contact with others it uplifts them, but it raises us up too.