Without kindness, there can be no true joy.

Any pleasure that requires somebody else to be diminished is thinner than it looks. The satisfaction of the sharp remark, the win that leaves a person humiliated, the good news that is mostly good because of who it is bad for: all of them work briefly and leave something behind that is not enjoyment. Kindness is not decoration on top of joy; it is a condition of the real thing.

Run a quiet check on your best moments this week and ask what each of them cost anyone. If the answer is nothing, that is worth noticing. If the answer is somebody, the pleasure was probably shorter than you remember.