When I dreamed up this secret society, there was never any question that I wanted it to be specifically about unreasonable kindness. I don't think I could fully put it into words at the time why it was so important that it was unreasonable, but I recently found a phrase that made it crystal clear.
I was reading the book The Power of Moments (because my kind of Unreasonable Kindness wants to have hospitality and delight as part of it!), and they talk about the four kinds of moments we can create: Moments of Elevation, Moments of Insight, Moments of Pride, and Moments of Connection.
They share a collection of incredible stories where people have created special moments, including:
The Magic Hotel in Hollywood, CA that offers its guests a Popsicle Hotline where they can pick up the phone located at the pool at any time and order a free popsicle that gets delivered on a silver platter
A school that has designed a big "Signing Day" celebration where high school students get to declare in front of friends and family where they've signed up to go to college
A crowdfunding website where you can financially support a specific classroom's request for supplies, and the students write handwritten letters to every donor
These are special, elevated moments, but they're not easy to create because of a certain force that exists in the world.
Enter my favorite phrase of the entire book that articulated my desire to create a space for unreasonable kindness:
"Beware of the soul-sucking force of reasonableness."
Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes, dear goodness yes.
It immediately reminded me of why I wanted this secret society to be about Unreasonable Kindness.
There is something about being unreasonable with how kind we get to treat each other that surprises people, that delights people, that interrupts the status quo. It wakes people up and causes them to notice, "Wait, we get to be this kind to people? We get to be this thoughtful and creative and compassionate?"
Regarding the examples from the book, they say that there will always be someone saying...
"Of course serving popsicles to guests is a delightful idea, but honestly, it's just not practical to staff a hotline all day. Why don't we just store the popsicles in a self-serve freezer near the ice machine?"
(boo.)
"Sure, signing day is a terrific tradition, but we just have so many students. What if we just printed their college choices in a program so we can make time for an inspirational graduation speaker?"
(*sound of soul dying just a bit*)
"It's been fun to have the students write handwritten letters and mail them, but it doesn't make sense anymore, given the size of the company. Operations could be made more efficient by scanning letters and distributing them via email."
WOMP WOMP.
"Of course it would be fun to [XYZ] but let's be [Practical/Efficient/Reasonable]."
It doesn't "make sense".
We don't have the time.
Let's just do it normally.
Can you hear how it deflates all the joy? All the aliveness?
I want to explicitly practice living outside of reason.
I want to express creativity from my full and overflowing aliveness.
I want to create highly unreasonable amounts of kindness that stop people in their tracks.
We only get one life to live.
We can do practical and efficient in other places, but not in kindness, joy, and delight of our fellow humans.
But! It's incredibly helpful to know about the soul-sucking force of reasonableness as we go out and courageously create in the world. When we know it exists by default, we won't be surprised when it shows up. If we're on the lookout, we won't get derailed as easily.
("Oh hello soul-sucking force of reasonableness, I've been expecting you! I get that you are into practicality, efficiency, and reasonableness, but I, however, am into joy, aliveness, and unreasonableness." - Future You)
Reasonableness is going to forever be out there trying to suck out my creative and alive soul.
I can see it coming...and choose unreasonableness, over, and over, and over again.
- Lindsay
P.S. It's way better to fight the soul-sucking force of reasonableness as a team. I'm kind of imagining a Buffy the Vampire Slayer kind of vibe. If you want to see what it's like to be in an incredibly supportive community cheering on your unreasonableness, I would be so jazzed to have you attend our workshop next Tuesday. Only a few more days to get your tickets at unreasonablekindness.eventbrite.com.