Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I know some of you. But for those I don’t, my name is Christian Wilson, and I’m an alumnus of St. Andrew’s Class of 2001 and a board of trustee member.

When Joy invited me to give the Chapel Talk, she mentioned that one of the aims was so that the community could get to know the board members better. For me, the Chapel Talks always served as a way to reflect on our spiritual growth as individuals and as a community. This invitation coincided with something I’ve been thinking about recently due to the current state of our world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about kindness, and furthermore, the lack of kindness I see in and around me. So I figured why not come to you today and talk to you about how kindness has touched my life in different ways and how we might think about being kinder people day to day.

Reflecting back on my time at St. Andrew’s, I began to realize that acts of kindness have played a major role in guiding me to where I am today. It was kindness when a work colleague reached out to my mother—a single mother raising three children—to give her information about a program that could introduce her children to some of the best schools in the country. It was kindness: the kindness of Mr. Caldwell showed me during my interview and tour of St. Andrew’s so many years ago that swayed me to choose St. Andrew’s to spend my formative years. It was the kindness of the teachers and the staff at St. Andrew’s that helped to develop me into a person that cares about people, cares about our communities, and ultimately cares about the world we live in.

I think you see where this is going.

When I was an investment banking analyst, it was the kindness of one of my bosses to take me under their wing and mentor me. It was his sage advice that in the end helped me to find my career in medicine. The thread that seems to tie many of my life events together is a simple act of kindness from another.

This exercise has shown me that kindness comes in many forms, but once you know how to look for it, it is surprisingly easy to see when it is there. And more importantly, for this talk and our spiritual growth, where it is not in my view, we as a society have decided to prioritize convenience over kindness. As an aside, in the first version of this talk, I said people have given up kindness for convenience, but I actually don’t think that is fair. Kindness still exists in our society, just often when it is convenient to be kind.

People want things to come easy these days, and shouldn’t they? With our technological advances, nearly anything can be at the tip of your fingertips in seconds. We earned our modern day conveniences, didn’t we? To some degree, I would say yes, but should convenience come at the cost of kindness?

One of the things I’ve learned throughout my journey in life is that kindness is hard work. Now, is it possible to come across situations where kindness is easy. Kindness is convenient, sure. But to move through life actively making the choice to be kind—even when it’s inconvenient for you—now, that’s hard. And I’m not talking about being a martyr for kindness either, but rather recognizing the situations where it takes a few extra seconds or minutes to be kind to another, or yourself for that matter, to begin to recognize those situations. Now, that takes effort.

Now, is that a bad thing? No. It is through doing the hard things that we ultimately grow and start to realize our potential. Just like pushing through a tough practice on the sports field or working through a tough math problem helps us grow in athletics or academics, it’s through starting to put effort into being kind that we can start to work on our spiritual growth.

Now, convenience is not the only reason that being kind is hard work. Kindness can also be unpopular. When I say kindness can be unpopular, I mean that in a few senses. But don’t worry—we aren’t going to go through them all. Though I did want to touch on one I think is most relevant for many of us in this room. So let’s take an example.

As technology advances, more and more of our actions are online, and more and more of those interactions have become depersonalized. Furthermore, with the ongoing use of AI, these depersonalized interactions will only continue to increase. The problem is it’s easy to be unkind when you depersonalize—when you dehumanize—your interaction with someone else.

Go to the comment section of almost any social media page, and you’ll see what I mean. The negative comments and bullying have become an epidemic. Not only that, the sheer number of these unkind comments is astonishing, such that negativity has become the norm, has become the popular opinion.

The same concept of dehumanization has been used for centuries to justify unkind acts on one another. And frankly, it is still today, as is obvious in today’s news. But I digress. Therefore, to stop and take a minute to say something kind can be seen as going against what is popular.

Now, I think many of us in this room believe we wouldn’t think that way or behave that way, which I believe is true. St. Andrew’s does a great job of bringing together thoughtful, kind people.

But would you stand up and be outwardly [kind] when everyone else is silent? When everyone else is doing the convenient thing? That’s where kindness becomes hard. Again, it’s hard to stand up and be kind when everyone around you is being mean or silent. But as I mentioned before, it’s in doing the hard things that we find growth.

At this point in the talk, we are at about a thousand words, which is the guidance Joy gave me when thinking about length. So let’s bring it home.

In summary, living a life of kindness is hard. It’s inconvenient and sometimes unpopular. But doing hard things is ultimately how we grow and start to realize our, in this case, spiritual potential.

Thank you.