Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness

by George Saunders

As we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish—how illogical, really. We come to love certain other people and are thereby counterinstructed in our own centrality. We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we’re not separate, and don’t want to be.

Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving. I think this is true. The great Syracuse poet Hayden Carruth said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was mostly Love, now.