When you’re writing a novel (or a screenplay) everything your characters do has to serve a purpose. This is related to the idea of plants and payoffs in screenwriting. Readers (audiences) are investing their time and imaginative/emotional energy and they must be rewarded. If the writer shoves something in front of the reader to pay attention to, then that attention has to pay off.
In fiction clear lines are drawn between action and outcome in a way that real life can’t provide. Real life is like that biblical quotation, “For now, we see through a glass, darkly…”
Fiction takes the glass and polishes it clear (at least in spots) so that the reader can trace from action to outcome and be satisfied.
The reason I’ve belaboured the importance of plants and payoffs is because real life seldom rewards us with them.
We think that the kindnesses we do are seldom noticed, even more rarely rewarded, and what does it even matter?
But my life philosophy is that while kindness matters, our specific kind actions aren’t the point. We are butterfly wing flaps.
You know the old chaos theory of a butterfly flapping its wings and triggering a storm hundreds or thousands of miles away?
I believe that actions we aren’t even aware of taking are potential butterfly wing flaps. We never know what small thing we do may trigger a life-affirming outcome for a stranger.
Believing in chaotic kindness is a way to journey with hope and to feel connected even when we’re seeing through a glass, darkly. Those times pass. Our unrecognised, vital importance to others never does.
Thank you for simply being you.
Comments
4 responses to “Chaotic Kindness”
That’s a lovely sentiment, and I agree wholeheartedly. It takes so little for me to be generally kind in my interactions with people, and I feel like that kindness is like seeds that blooms out in the world. From very small things, like thanking a cashier (I will never understand why that’s so rare that I often get baffled surprise in response) to things like helping my elderly neighbor bring in her groceries, these things take me moments and they help create the world I want to live in.
Yes! and it’s sad how often a small act of kindness is greeted with surprise.
NO, NO! Thank you!
No? 🙂