Think about it. This game is filled with expressions of pain, sometimes from people in their most desperate moments. Even when I post a positive request it's usually something like “I did OK today, better than usual” and I am usually doing so from a place of some level of loneliness. So if the “positive vibes only” people were right I should come away from that game feeling sad and drained. But even if I don't receive a single reply of my own and spend the whole time replying to and empathising with people in pain I always come away from the experience with a sense of peace and connectedness. I can confidently say that it is not the expression of sadness, anger, fear or any other of the emotions we define as negative that is the cause of drain on relationships. Your emotions are valid and you don’t have to hide them, you may just have to find a better way to express them or different people to express them to!

In this game you remain anonymous, you don’t have much room to tell people things like your age or gender or location, only what is absolutely necessary. There is a report button of course, but I have never had to report a single person. People in this game use the anonymity to spread kindness. Kindness that means more because it’s completely optional, from people who can’t possibly have an agenda. I find myself being MORE kind on that game than I would be even on a forum or social media. It’s an expression of genuine kindness for the sake of making someone else happy because no matter how great my reply is noone but the person I am writing to will ever know. This doesn’t make me any less motivated to be kind, in some ways it's more exciting, knowing how much it means to me when I receive a reply and thinking that maybe I might be able to send someone so much happiness as well. Being in an environment like this restores some of my faith in humanity. Even when they have nothing else to gain from it they will often be kind just for the joy of spreading kindness.

In this game you can only write 7 letters for a request and only 14 for a reply. You can only reply once and you will never truly know what that person thought of that reply. The reply is saved on the person receiving its game but you have no record of the replies you have written and you can’t go back and look at them. I know when I reply to someone that I have to keep it short. There are times when I wish I could write more but It’s a very stark reminder that you can’t solve all this person’s problems. Sometimes a person asks a question and I start thinking “Well the first step is to do X but next they will really have to do Y!” but I have to remind myself that we are all on our own journey and I can’t type out my whole theory of life in this one reply. No, I have to sit there and think for a moment on what the most helpful thing would be for that person to hear right now right at this moment, knowing I only have room for one or maybe two ideas. Most of the time I settle on an acknowledgement of their feelings, try to find something encouraging I can say about them from just their tiny request, if they asked for advice or I think it would help I can give them one or two places to start. Then I have to release the rest of that journey to the person on the other end. It’s hard when you feel you might know things that they have not yet realised, or when you want to ask a question to clarify, but we all have different values and are on different journeys so I think this is as it should be!

In this game you have to release the replies you have sent into the wild. But that doesn't mean you didn’t care. When I read about a really painful situation the feeling of wanting to reach out to that person and offer them comfort is real and it can be very strong. Sometimes I yell out “oh no!” at my computer screen and sometimes I actually cry. I know that I really do care about them, but there is nothing more I can do for them so I have to let that feeling go. That says a lot about the human experience. We go through life and people come and go into our lives, it’s easy to take this as a comment about our value and worthiness of love. It can feel like our value goes up and down with supply and demand like the stock market. But when I look at other people and the way that it is easy to value and care for a human being I know almost nothing about, it’s easier to feel in myself that I am worth something and am lovable no matter who I am or how many people I have thinking about me at that very moment. That is a thought that gives me a lot of peace.

When we feel really sad and alone it’s easy to long for comfort, another person to take the time to think about us and give us kindness. But I have found the act of being kind to another is just as important if not more important. Empathising with another person gives you perspective. Not in the sense that you would think “At least I am not this guy.” But more in the sense that the experience of pain, loneliness, fear, anger, all these emotions and experiences are very universal. It draws you out of whatever you are feeling at the moment to remind you of all the other feelings you have experienced, and the feelings of others. This gives me a sense of the transience of feelings. That it’s OK that you are feeling something bad right now because you also have positive feelings to look forward to and it's also OK that a good feeling will end because it’s supposed to and it won’t be the last. As I give words of encouragement or even advice to others I am also giving them to myself, affirming the thought patterns and perspectives that I have found helpful during crisis mode but without all the extra difficulties of actually experiencing crisis mode. It’s a chance to practise thinking better for your own sake!

I spent a lot of time thinking about why replies on Kind Words are much less draining than similar conversations in the real world. Usually if I heard something like “ I feel like I am a burden on my friends and noone really cares about me” I would want to say something comforting, but I also might find myself judging this person in order to protect myself. Does this person have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ friends or do they just expect too much from them? If I set the expectation that I was always going to be there with something kind to say I might find myself asked for more support than I can give. With no stake in the conversation, I can confidently say that that is a terrible feeling that this person doesn’t deserve to feel, regardless of any issues they may have themselves. This makes me wonder about my in person relationships and why it’s so much harder to say so there. Ultimately I believe the drain we feel from dealing with someone who is sad is the drain we feel from our own sense of obligation. When I freely give empathy and care to who I want to, when I can, I feel no drain. I sometimes feel sad in an empathetic sense but it makes me feel connected and grateful that they shared their precious emotions with me. It is when we are asked too much or expected to fix things we cannot control that we feel drained. But there have also been times in my life when friends have asked me not to share my negative feelings they couldn’t fix, expressing that they felt drained when I can confidently say from my side that I had no such expectations. I think this was a valuable thing to see, that I can control what I expect from other people and how obliged I feel to them, but I have to release myself from other people's expectations of me and to some extent how obliged others feel to me. I hope this will help me bring the kindness of kind words into my everyday life.

Kind Words is a simple game with a lot of limitations. There are times when I feel a pang of sadness that I can only write one thing, or when I receive a really good reply and I start to think “If only I could be friends with this person.” I wouldn’t replace my friends with sessions of Kind Words but this environment has a lot of things that normal friendships do not. By taking away certain parts of the experience of relating to people it can shake us out of our normal patterns. I am a naturally verbose person learning to write in only 14 lines. I learn to be in the moment, taking these tiny precious interactions with strangers with the gratitude they deserve. All within an environment that the low expectations of commitment are naturally set by the limitations of the game. I came to it as a way to diversify my social interactions in a time of lockdowns and social distancing but ultimately I am finding it to have an effect on the way I interact with people outside of the game. I am happy to say it is making me a kinder and more peaceful person, which is something I have wanted for a very long time.