Kindness

Kindness. What happened to simple no-frills-attached kindess? With the Holidays approaching, I've been in a strange mental state - sort of a mix of nostalgia and melancholy with a good dose of bi-polar disorder thrown in. Things have been going well - I've just been seeing the world through some very strangely tinted glasses.

And then P. and I had a very interesting conversation as we car-pooled into work (YAY for the HOV!) - a conversation about simple kindness. And I realized that "kindness" is one of the major themes of anime - and may account for part of why I hold Japanese animation as a holy grail of animation types. Every series I can think of (okay - every series I enjoyed - because let's face it, anime is like country music - when it's bad . . . it's BAD) has had an element of kindness at its core. When the world goes to hell, it's the kindness that let's the characters wade through it.

T. and I have recently been watching a series called Kanon (Kah -n - own) (I have a heck of a time pronouncing the darn thing), which is a study in kindness. I watch the main character, and I think "What is wrong with people that we don't treat each other with that same level of kindness?" It is hard to imagine a world in which everyone is kind to each other - and the levels of crime, hate, and war don't taper off. I'm not saying that it would create a Utopia. But kindness works miracles.

Seriously.