so much kindness this week

“so it is not that real kindness requires people to be selfless, it is rather that real kindness changes people in the doing of it, often in unpredictable ways. real kindness is an exchange with essentially unpredictable consequences. it is a risk precisely because it mingles our needs and desires with the needs and desires of others, in a way that so-called self-interest never can. (the notion of self-interest implies that we always know what we want, by knowing what the self is and what its interests are. it forecloses discovery.) kindness is a way of knowing people beyond our understanding of them.”

—adam phillips and barbara taylor, on kindness