No One Likes Chain Letters

It's true. Well, perhaps a few people enjoy the chain letter, but few they shall remain. The fact is, chain letters are akin to email spam. While the intentions behind their creation may be well founded, I have never found a chain letter that did not frustrate me with unnecessarily generous spacing of text, cheap graphics and the all too familiar promise of good fortune on the condition that you forward the letter to however many people within a certain time frame to continue the chain. Break the chain and stand to gain nothing.

The popularity of chain letters has definitely peeked and plateaued over the years but there is an interesting similarity between chain letters and the relationship or gratitude and kindness. Through spreading a chain letter, a reward of some sort is almost always promised. Because of this promise, millions of people have and continue to forwarded these electronic nuisances, often times without even reading the content of the letter. Unfortunately, this naivety with emails is synonymous to opening the flood gates to hackers and viruses, but I digress.

The human race is effectively one big chain letter. Of course, we have among us our share of societal viruses, but being grateful for something heightens the propensity to be kind which, in turn, is appreciated by another who is thus more prone to forwarding the kindness that was previously bestowed upon him to another, due to the gratitude felt from having been the recipient of such kindness. See the chain effect?

Thinking of gratitude and kindness as a chain is fantastic because it adds a degree of responsibility to the concepts. For all of our acts of kindness and expressions of gratitude, we are adding a link to the chain that stretches back as far as human history will go. For all of our selfishness, greed, ingratitude and cruelty, we are taking a link away from the chain. What do we, as individuals, want to be responsible for?

Unlike an emailed chain letter, the rewards of kindness and gratitude are real. The world is made better when the chain is continued.