244. Song No. 3,661: “The Frown Song,” Ben Folds
Way to Normal, 2008

On the topic of kindness! Here’s the other end of the spectrum, a story told through the daily domino effect of being a self-obsessed dick.

The unflattering images it evokes—undeservedly haughty customers abusing the working class as automatically as they breathe; coddled trophy wives gossiping and overdramatizing their blandly cushy codependent lives; perpetual main characters living in comfortable oblivion to the humanity around them—feel almost hilariously quaint against current society’s maniacal quest to find new nadirs and unearth previously unexplored ways to be escalatingly awful to one another all along the gleefully wretched way to discovering those lowest possible lows.

But even being a little dated and nowhere near as irredeemably rotten to the core as today’s low-hanging fruit, “The Frown Song” still paints an unsettlingly, viciously accurate picture of that post-millennium nosedive right into nastiness, selfishness, smug entitlement and societal irresponsibility that we’ve come to hold so dear:

Tread slowly from the car to the spa
Like a weary war-torn refugee
Crossing the border with her starving child
It’s a struggle just to get to shiatsu
Present the waitress with your “allergy card“
And tell her all of your problems,
Leave no tip at all…

There are, of course, far worse sins against fellow humans that your average selfish prick is capable of, but the daily crimes we commit against others chip away at the common decency we all still owe each other (at least, until someone’s demonstrated they deserve to be met with the same disregard for common courtesy they lead with, because killing folks with kindness is not the politely stayed tongue-biting everyone has earned) and needlessly make the world a meaner place with every fashionable frown one person decides to pass along to some unsuspecting strangers whose only misstep was crossing paths with a determinably unpleasant storm cloud with no greater purpose in life than raining on everyone else’s parade just because they can. It’s the Whisper Down the Lane that chews up everything in its path and normalizes the worst of us, a slippery slope that’s proven mighty challenging to come back from.

But everyone has bad days and ugly moments and lets slip their lesser demons in those moments of frustration and stress, and even the best among us with the biggest hearts fall victim to being the hurt people who hurt people. Human beings are messy, life is messy and being a sentient cucumber with anxiety is fucking hard, and no one can be a shining example of human kindness at all times, and making things harder for no reason is a dick move that only makes being part of the machine suck a little more for everyone.

Since the true motivations of others are forever doomed to be mysterious unknowns, it’s not always apparent who just happened to be caught in the worst version of themselves and who delights in being the worst part of everyone’s day, so you can’t always tell who’s looking for a friendly face to find faith in or to go nuclear on. And while it is tempting to just fight frowns with fuck-yous, nearly 20 years in print media (and also driving in New Jersey) has taught me time and again that there are few things as immensely gratifying as standing your smiley ground and refusing to yield your sunny disposition to someone’s stormier soul.

The high road isn’t always the best way and, honestly, sometimes it just makes you an easier target. But being where someone else’s rottenness goes unmet and refusing to pass along their toxic attitude to all the strangers within striking distance who are just trying to go about their days as friction-free as possible is the kind of weaponized courtesy that’s an invaluable asset in the war on kindness this hellfire timeline unceremoniously dumped on a population with plenty of real problems to worry about. It’s not enough to be part of the solutiom: We all have to proactively mitigate the problem, too, and the best way to do that is personifying the best we’re capable of to be an authentic example of what it means to lead with a well-intentioned heart.