Kindheartedness, Lightheartedness, and Warmheartedness

by Donald DeMarco, Ph.D.

The heart is the source and the form of all moral virtues. But in the “infectious virtues,” the heart manifests itself with more immediacy than do any of the other virtues. In fact, someone who has these virtues elicits a positive response from people without having to express them in a deed. It is as if their presence in the heart is enough to make them heartfelt. Hence, they are also the “visceral virtues,” communications to others through the silent eloquence of the body. They are the virtues that the writer is comfortable with, more than the philosopher is, since they show how a good habit can incarnate itself in the body language of its possessor so well that it becomes palpable to others.

The good heart should have three qualities: it should be kind, not callous; light, not heavy; warm, not cold. By comparison, justice, courage, generosity, and so on, appear to be somewhat over-broad and abstract. We may not recognize that a man is sincere by merely looking at him. But this is not the case with the triad of “infectious virtues.” We literally feel their kindness, cheer, and warmth.

Kindheartedness is unique in that it is the one virtue that is most likely to reproduce its image in another person. In other words, it is the most infectious of the three, the one most likely to be imitated, the one most likely to be passed on.

Some time ago a UCLA drama student performed a scene from Annie Get Your Gun at a bon voyage party for one of her professors. After the performance she was standing at the buffet when a man, whom she did not know, approached her and told her how much he enjoyed her routine. He kindly asked her what she intended to do with the rest of her life. The young student, who was operating at that time on little more than hope and dreams, informed him that she hoped to go to New York some day and make a career for herself on stage. When he asked her what was stopping her, she explained that she barely had enough money to get back to Los Angeles, let alone to go to New York. In truth, she, as well as her sister, mother, and grandmother, had, at various times, been living on welfare.

The man smiled and offered to loan her $1,000 to get her started. He insisted, however, on three conditions. First, if she met with success, she would repay the loan, without interest, in five years. Secondly, that she would never reveal his identity. And finally, that she would one day “pass the kindness along to help some other person in similar circumstances.”

The stranger’s kindheartedness was so striking that the young aspirant was convinced, as she put it, “that the good Lord was giving me a strong and unmistakable push.”

She accepted the money, went to New York, and became a success. Five years to the day, she paid her benefactor back. Nonetheless, the extraordinary kind ness of this man, coupled with his expressed wish to remain anonymous, baffled her. Then one day, while looking for the Lord’s Prayer in a recently published translation of the Bible, the following words from Matthew 6:2-4 seemed to leap off the page: “When you give a gift to a beggar, don’t shout about it as the hypocrites do. . .When you do a kindness to someone, do it secretly. . . And your Father Who knows all secrets will reward you.”

A gift is marred when its giver seeks praise. The truly kindhearted per son simply wants to give, and has absolutely no interest in being congratulated for his efforts. His gift is pure, unalloyed by the dross of egoism. As far as the third condition is concerned, the now successful entertainer admits to “passing the kindness along to others,” but secretly and anonymously, of course.

Oh yes, the name of the successful artist. She is none other than star of stage, screen, and television—Miss Carol Burnett!

Have you had a kindness shown?

Pass it on.

(Pass It On, Rev. Henry Burton)

Chesterton himself could soar because he did not take himself seriously. Too much concern for one’s ego, or pride, he once said, results in “the falsification of fact by the introduction of self.” Christian humility demands the “subtraction” of myself in order to see things as they are in themselves. The humble Chris tian is then free to undertake his appointed task of activity in a spirit of lighthearted cheer fulness. When Ebe nezer Scrooge finally unburdened himself from his weighty ego, he could almost fly: “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy.”

The heart that is light defies gravity and flies on the wings of levity. Cheerfulness is the natural expression of a person’s lightheartedness. For John Ruskin, “Cheerfulness is as natural to the heart of a man in strong health, as color to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom, there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor, or erring habits.” “A light heart lives long,” adds Shakespeare.

The Czech writer, Milan Kundera, titled his celebrated novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The lightness to which he referred, however, was really weightlessness. Astronauts who experience weightlessness do not fly, they merely roll about. Chesterton’s lightness is upward, not circular. He could have justifiably called his autobiography, The Enjoyable Light ness of Being. When another dispirited European writer, Franz Kafka, read Chesterton, he exclaimed, “He is so gay, one might almost believe he had found God.” From Kafka this is high praise, indeed.

Chesterton’s lightheartedness by no means was empty-headedness. He was not facetious. His cheerfulness never adumbrated his intelligence. It was his clear intelligence, in fact, that allowed him to see how reckless disregard could be so hilarious. Consider his rebuttal of socialism:

There might be people who prefer to have their hats leased out to them every week. Or wear their neighbors’ hats in rotation to express the idea of comradeship. Or possibly to crowd under one very large hat to represent an even larger, cosmic conception. But most of them feel that something is added to the dignity of men when they put on their own hats.

It is interesting to note that disciples of the socialist Saint-Simon wore a special waistcoat that could neither be put on nor taken off unassisted. In their zeal to express comradeship they lost sight of practical common sense. Chesterton could not be weighed down either by ego or by ideology. Nor was he weighted down by the realization that “The river of human nonsense flows on forever.” Nor was he daunted by the unfulfilled dreams of Christianity: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

Concerning opinion polls, he was remarkably ahead of his time. “They are like lampposts,” he commented, “that drunks use more for support than for illumination.” “A light touch is the mark of strength,” he said. But for him it was also a mark of wit.

Because he saw the lightness in the nature of everything, he could cheerfully avoid anything that was base. “Variability is one of the virtues of woman,” he wrote. “It obviates the crude requirements of polygamy. If you have a good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.” Thus, he could also hold that “Purity is the only atmosphere for passion.”

Chesterton’s heart was light because his hopes were high. As a Christian, he has much to be cheerful about. “If there were no God,” he quipped, “there would be no atheists.” “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”

“Adventure,” he once remarked, “is the voluntary acceptance of discomfort.” Life itself was the greatest of all adventures. But its discomforts were al ways less than its joys. For it set man on a search that led to a discovery that made everything worthwhile, like the journey to Bethlehem:

Divinity and infancy do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. That tense sense of crisis which still tingles in the Christmas story and even in every Christ mas celebration accentuates the idea of a search and discovery.

On the other hand, we know only too well how age can harden people, turning them into cranky, crusty, crotchety, cantankerous, ‘grumpy old men.’ Life is a drama, ambiguous and uncertain. If we are fortunate and live long enough to enter our “Golden Years,” we have no assurance whatsoever that we will arrive at that noble estate without being cursed by cold-heartedness. The entire thrust of Charles Dickens’s classic, A Christmas Carol, is to warm up the frosty heart of Ebenezer Scrooge. Early in the story, Dickens describes his character as follows:

The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell is an icy lake. Scrooge was headed in that direction until his heart started to heat up. And when it did, it burst into a paroxysm of love and generosity. If warmheartedness is the channel, love is its furnace. Philosopher Dietrich von Hilde brand speaks of “the peculiar quality of expansive warmheartedness which belongs to pure love.” He also points out how easy it is for lust and any of the other Deadly Sins to cause the heart to atrophy and lose its warmth. A heart of vice is a heart of ice.

Shakespeare’s The Life of Timon of Athens is Dickens’s tale told in reverse. Timon is a person of extravagant generosity. He gives his wealth to his friends until he has nothing left. But when he asked his beneficiaries for a little financial help, they all refuse. His heart then turns cold. He is now consumed by hatred for all humanity. He says of his ungrateful associates, “Their blood is caked, ‘tis cold, it seldom flows; ‘Tis lack of kindly warmth they are not kind” (ii, 2, 217). Timon dies at the end of the play, alone and miserable.

The warm heart has the capacity to warm others, just as a source of heat warms its immediate surrounding. A warm heart can touch other hearts and ignite them in the process. The Heart of Jesus not only warms, but burns. After talking with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, the two companions say to each other: “Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?” (Lk 24, 32).

One of the endearing features of the warmhearted person is that he manifests his virtue even prior to its enactment. The virtue of warm-heartedness, like modesty, is recognized apart from its being expressed in action. Its “temperature” alone is sufficient to make its presence felt. This is the case with any personal feature that has warmth, whether the warmth is in the heart, the eyes, the words, the smile, or the laughter.

Just as, according to the old saying, “Who splits wood warms twice,” the warmhearted person engenders warm-heartedness in others. Marriage is a relationship that demands that the spouses warm each other’s hearts.

A friend of mine went to Church and prayed that her husband would relate to her with a little more warmth. She happened to be the only person at the Church that particular evening who was not with her spouse. This made her situation all the more poignant. To feel closer to her husband, she removed her wedding ring from her finger and held it in her hand. She then offered her petition, in silence and with hope.

Upon returning home, she was greeted at the door by her husband. He asked her, in warm tones, “Can I get you a nice cup of tea, dear?”

When we warm up people’s drinks, we can be taking an important step in warming their hearts. We have house-warmings in the hope that these dwelling places will warm the hearts of all of its future inhabitants and guests. The physical closely neighbors the spiritual. This is “global warming” in the best sense of the expression. “Shall not my heart’s warmth not nurse thee into strength?” asks the poet, Browning.

Another character of Dickens, Jowl, in The Old Curiosity Shop, boasted that “Experience has never put a chill upon my warmheartedness.” It may have been an idle boast for Jowl, who was a rather vain fellow, but it remains an attainable ideal for the rest of us. To remain warm-hearted despite the surround ing chills is a most desirable and exalted virtue that can benefit us all. We can all grow warmer with age.