In Praise of Kindness

Have you ever noticed how people like the ‘zinger’ reply? We love those quirky quotes of Oscar Wilde, the put-downs of Downton’s Dowager, and so on. The wry asides. Witty. Fun. And ultimately rather cruel.

Why is it we tend to admire things that we might hesitate to say ourselves, face to face with another? And if we admire those harsh words in others, doesn’t that admiration bring us closer to saying them, to feeling them? That’s how unkindness grows.

The positive aspect in all this is easy: we are, almost all of us, naturally kind and reluctant to offend. We have to be trained to be unkind, just as soldiers have to be trained to face danger and kill. We don’t do that naturally.

It’s time to reclaim who we naturally are.