A colleague once mentioned an adage that has stuck with me: kindness is a skill. I have come around to believing that it is both a virtue and a skill, as in: it is both good and not available to everyone without deliberate practice.

Kindness is not niceness. While niceness is a kind of surface-level positive act and making sure not to offend, kindness is an artifact of genuine empathy - wanting the best for the other person, even if there are moments that are not easy or superficially pleasant.

In difficult situations, for example when someone is not doing themselves a favor with their behaviour (it happens to all of us sometimes, and everyone has their reasons), you can always paper over the situation or ignore it and start over the next day, but this will cause the friction in the relationship to re-appear again and again. Kindness starts a conversation about it, without judging harshly or criticising, but by inquiring and being open to their end of the experience, in the hopes that there is closeness in understanding the difficult moments, and maybe a way of changing destructive behaviors without losing the good stuff.

When there is a conflict of interest or you need something from someone, it's good advice to be kind to them. But careful here: it's not "be kind at first and then be unkind when you don't get what you want". Being kind is playing the long game, the forever game: by being the good person and being kind, you build a reputation as a person who is to be trusted, because you can be trusted. There are no trap doors here; be good, then you will be seen as good, and people will like to interact with you because they can rely on you.

This seems blasé, but: be kind to others, it will change your life.