Cruelty sucks.
It’s time for Unreasonable Kindness.
Did anyone follow you here? Come in quickly and make yourself at home.
Your ears perked up at the idea of Unreasonable Kindness, did they?
I am so happy you’re here.
I’m over the blatant and unrelenting cruelty that pervades our society and I’m into the era of being unreasonably kind to other humans for no reason. Perhaps you are too?
Read on to see if this secret society is right for you.
This secret society brings together joyful people ready to move from passively observing cruelty to actively creating kindness, so that we can hone our craft and design unique moments of unreasonable kindness and delight that reconnect humanity.
The kind of kindness that surfaces our humanity.
The kind of kindness that breaks the false narrative that we’re out here doing it alone.
The kind of kindness that interrupts default cruelty and white supremacy.
If you want to be up to that kind of kindness… Stay with me.
Why Unreasonable Kindness?
Photo by Vivian Chen
I am a very specific kind of human.
A human that absolutely loves customer service. A human that is obsessed with delight.
I read books on customer service for fun and attended customer service conferences back in the day. I’ve considered designing my own Delight MBA. I’m obsessed with the Ritz-Carlton’s motto “Radar on, antenna up”, I secretly want to work in hotel concierge, and my heart skips a beat when I read about specific examples of restaurants or hotels going out of their way to delight a customer.
Unreasonable Kindness is the most delicious concoction of hosting, hospitality, customer service, connection, joy, silliness, and delight... all of my favorite things.
There’s something that gets me about how unreasonable the level of delight is. My heart, which is filled with generosity and the desire to delight, once wondered if we were truly allowed to be that level of unreasonable with our kindness. My brain would spontaneously surface ideas where I could use my creativity to delight someone but it would immediately be tagged as DEFINITELY TOO MUCH.
Well lean in closer, dear friend, because I’ve discovered something.
I’ve secretly been doing unreasonable amounts of kindness for the past decade… and no one has stopped me yet.
Let me give you one example. I send everyone a hosting form when they come to my house so I can get all their preferences and make them tailored baked goods (more on that later). Not only does it delight the heck out of people (after confusing them briefly as to why so much kindness is happening), but now people are asking to have a copy of the form for their own hosting…
People are requesting the tools to do more unreasonable kindness in their lives.
So here’s the question.
Do you crave tools to create Unreasonable Kindness in your life?
Do you crave a community where we’re spending time and energy scanning the world for where we can add the fine craft of delight?
Excellent. Let's continue.
What is Unreasonable Kindness?
Unreasonable Kindness is different from random acts of kindness.
There is nothing random about Unreasonable Kindness.
You have an untapped creativity inside you. You have a way that you, as the individual human that you are, imagine how the world could be. You have a way that only you can see to delight the people around you.
In the Secret Society for Unreasonable Kindness, we plan. We scheme. We hone our craft of delight so that we feel self-expressed with each action. You create acts of Unreasonable Kindness that can only come from the individual human you are.
Unreasonable Kindness is a big production! (or not!)
It’s completely over the top! (or not!)
It takes into account your strengths, your desires, and your vision for what the world can be.
Unreasonable Kindness is not your run-of-the-mill random acts of kindness.
It is decidedly TOO MUCH... or deliciously tiny and undetectable to most.
It is outrageous and unreasonable.
It is you and your creativity on display for the world to see. (Or just those you want to deeply delight.)
Unreasonable kindness makes no sense and requires creativity, intention, and commitment that only your soul knows about.
Unreasonable kindness has three components:
✨ Self-expression: We're humans who are filled with joy and we choose to engage with the world through kindness, creativity, and delight. The unreasonable kindness moments we create come from the individual humans we are and our creativity and worldview of how we get to treat each other.
✨ Craftsmanship: Unreasonable kindness is intentional and there's a skill to it. We choose to spend time in community honing our craft of creating unreasonable kindness moments.
✨ Contribution: Unreasonable kindness is one way that we create our contribution in the world. We're interrupting cruelty, hate, isolation, disconnection, and creating the world we desire.
We're into kindness as a regenerative resource that not only delights others but reminds us of our humanity and ability to make an impact.
You'll want to join our secret society if:
You love delighting people
You want to be doing it regularly in community
You 're eager to interrupt cruelty/hate/isolation/disconnection and contribute to the world you want to live in
The Power of Unreasonable Kindness
On Monday March 20th, 2017, I learned a fact that would worm its way into the depths of my brain and nag at me for years to come.
After scanning tickets and ushering in all the attendees, I slipped into one of the remaining empty seats as I did countless times as a volunteer for the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. This particular event featured Tony McAleer, (now former) Executive Director of the organization Life After Hate, who began to share his experience of exiting white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements. His entire talk mesmerized me, but he shared two things that will never leave me.
There are two things that reliably exit people from extremist groups:
The birth of a daughter
Unexpected kindness
Something deep in my soul nodded.
I started reading more about people exiting extremist groups and found all kinds of examples:
It was there that an unexpected act of kindness began to open up King’s world. A Jamaican inmate asked if she knew how to play cribbage. “I had no idea how to process that. I was so used to anger and aggression and confrontation and violence. That’s what I was expecting. That’s what I was prepared for. I was not prepared for kindness. It literally disarmed me.”
“All of us [at Life After Hate] had an experience with a person who broke the mold of our global narrative about people,” Rangel says. “That genuine compassion cut through our defenses like butter. Don’t get me wrong; that doesn’t mean it happens overnight. What it means is that something got through. For me, a guy came to my cell and showed kindness in a place where there shouldn’t have been any.”
“In most cases, deradicalization was aided by a mixture of happenstance and intentional interventions involving exposure to diversity and unexpected kindness from members of (formerly) hated groups."
It simultaneously blew my mind and made perfect sense. Kindness has a power that can reconnect us to our own and others' humanity?!? I think my soul inherently knew that my desire for kindness was deeper than surface level.
Since that day, I’ve been fascinated by examples of kindness that have a huge societal impact. Like the story of Daryl Davis, the Black jazz musician who convinced 200 KKK members to give up their robes through “accidental courtesy”.
The more I heard about stories like this, the more I thought, WHY ARE WE NOT DOING THIS REGULARLY? How can we create as many invitations as possible to reconnect with our fellow humans and show everyone respect, dignity, connection, and kindness, whatever their circumstance? We have GOT to build the muscle of creating kindness on a larger scale.
So now we are.
I'm deadly serious about interrupting hate, and I'm just as serious about contributing joy.
This secret society will be a place for both seriousness and silliness.
There’s room for both here.
And kindness is political, kindness is personal, kindness is subversive in systems of domination. In this secret society, we're talking about all of it.
We're not sharing unreasonable kindness to change, correct or convince people, we're doing it with the knowledge that our kindness has the power to reconnect all of us.
Here's what we're NOT doing...
Hopefully you’re clear on Unreasonable Kindness is. Let’s be clear on what it isn’t.
👎 Doing kindness to other people so that they now owe you
👎 Kindness by overgiving and burning yourself out
👎 Kindness to trick or coerce someone into doing something you want them to do
👎 White savior kindness (saving/rescuing, Glinda-esque "I know, I KNOW, exactly what they need!")
👎 Performative kindness to seem like a "good person"
Becoming a Member of the Secret Society
Here's how it works. When you join as a member, you'll get access to:
Our incredible community of joyful humans who are into unreasonable kindness
Our monthly programming that gets you in the habit of creating juicy, self-expressed, creative experiences of unreasonable kindness
Each week, we'll join together as a community for three gatherings:
📖 Unreasonable Kindness Project Planning 📖
Each month we practice using our creativity, imagination, and self-expression to bring a kindness project into the world. Unreasonable Kindness Project Planning gives you weekly prompts/carved out time on how to dream up your project, put it out into the world, and celebrate when it’s complete! (This is livestreamed in the community on Mondays from 4:30-5pm PT / 7:30-8pm ET and is recorded if you can't attend live)
🔨 Honing Our Craft 🔨
Lindsay will teach on topics such as kindness, unreasonable kindness frameworks, how to listen for callings, etc to help you hone your craft of creating unreasonable kindness experiences. (This is livestreamed in the community on Wednesdays from 3-3:20pm PT / 6-6:20pm ET and is recorded if you can't attend live)
🎨 Craftsmanship Coworking 🎨
Each month we'll work on creating a unique unreasonable kindness experience and the community is here to support you. Come discuss the teaching and work on your idea solo or join with others to talk it through as you're designing and implementing your experience. (Wednesdays 3:30-4:30pm PT / 6:30-7:30pm ET)
So our months will look like the following:
Phase I will be the first two weeks of each month where we Learn, Observe, and Plan for our Unreasonable Kindness Experiences, and Phase II will be the second two weeks of each month where we Act, Celebrate, and Reflect on our creations.
The Benefits of Becoming a Member
Aside from the excitement of being a part of your first secret society, here are a few of the things you’ll be able to do as a certified card-carrying Unreasonable Kindness human:
Swiftly identify and act on your desires to contribute kindness in your community
Craft and execute unique kindness moments based on your creativity
Implement habits of celebration around your creativity and courage
Feel the weight and impact of what's going on in the world and use that to fuel your unique kindness contribution
Experience the beauty of what you can create when you put yourself and your ideas into the world
And ultimately, your membership will result in...
A portfolio of experiences of unreasonable kindness that you designed, created, and spread into the world.
Connection to a huge community of people who are resilient, creative, inspiring, powered by joy, and subversively kind. This community bolsters your craftsmanship and contribution.
You feeling powerful and resilient in the face of a harsh world.
We're right for you if...
You want to cultivate a regular habit of implementing kindness by dreaming up projects to put out into the world each month
You're excited to hone your specific creative kindness
You experience spontaneous desires to do unreasonably kind things for people and don't (yet!) have a place to funnel your energy or get excited about that
You desire to play a kindness game, not a cruelty game, in this world
You love frameworks and learning and are both serious AND silly
We're not right for you if...
You're into kindness, but you're not quite sure you understand the concept of Unreasonable Kindness or feel compelled to learn more
You don't need structure or community to implement your brand of kindness
You're ambivalent about (or into) the cruelty on full display in our country right now
You don't prefer to talk or hear about how kindness and cruelty relate to politics, global events, systems of oppression, white supremacy, etc
You prefer to have all your society memberships be fully known, visible, public, and overt... and/or this level of silliness is already too much 😁 (I am not right for you!)
I've already said too much.
So the question now is... are you in?
Secret Society Membership is $48/month. Join for as long or as short as you'd like, as membership is monthly and you can cancel at any time.
If it's right for you, my friend, I invite you to apply to join us.
But be quick and discreet!
Hope to see you at your first meeting soon.