Please!

Kindness has a bad reputation in the modern world. It remains one of the Christian virtues, but we are nevertheless suspicious of it. Sometimes it seems that kindness is stupidity, incompatible with success in life, career, recognition, and kind people are simpletons who do not know how to take care of their own interests. A successful life is often associated, if not with anger, then, in any case, with toughness, “walking on the heads” and “pushing elbows” other people – but how else can you achieve something in the world of competition? The price now is causticity, ruthlessness, cynicism, lack of illusions. And yet we all, consciously or not, want the world to be kinder. We want to respond to other people’s feelings sincerely and show kindness spontaneously. We want to be able to rely not only on ourselves, we want to be more open, to give without a second thought and to be grateful without hesitation. Let’s try to find a way to real kindness coming from the heart.

Why is it so hard

First of all, because we imagine that everyone else is evil, says nonviolent communication psychotherapist Thomas d’Ansembourg. But when their faces are cold and impenetrable, when they are not very friendly, this is often only a defensive reaction or a manifestation of shyness. It is enough to accidentally see your reflection in a street shop window to make sure that we also wear a mask. Paradoxically, parents, teaching us in childhood be kind and well-behaved, impose on us the idea that it is indecent to address strangers, to talk too loudly, that one should not flirt and try to please. By educating us in this way, they at the same time strive to ensure that we do not bother them too much, do not embarrass, do not interfere. Hence our indecision. In addition, the sense of justice instilled in childhood turns into the fact that you need to give as much as you receive. You have to overcome this habit. Another difficulty lies in the fact that, taking a step towards another, we take a risk. Our intentions may be misunderstood, our help may be refused, our feelings may not be accepted and ridiculed. Finally, we can simply be used, and then we will be in the cold. It takes courage and humility at the same time to step back from your ego and find the strength to trust yourself, others and life, instead of constantly defending yourself.

Internal selection

Psychoanalysis has an explanation for why being evil is, in a sense, easier. Anger speaks of feelings of anxiety and frustration: we are afraid that others will see our vulnerability *. Evil people are unsatisfied people who get rid of the internal feeling of trouble by taking out negative feelings on others. But constant anger comes at a cost: it drains our mental resources. Kindness, on the contrary, is a sign of inner strength and harmony: a kind person can afford the risk of “losing face”, because this will not destroy him.

Kindness is the ability to be with the other with all your being, together with the other, to empathize with him, says existential psychology. For this to happen, one must first re-establish contact with oneself, “be present in oneself.” We are so rarely kind because true kindness is incompatible with a lack of self-respect or a fear of other people, and fear and low self-esteem are very common in us. Defending ourselves, we use self-centeredness, prudence, ostentatious weakness. This is how we justify our failure to defend the truth, to warn of danger, intervene when another needs help .

Sincere kindness, and not just false sweetness and learned kindness, nourishes the one who expresses it in equal measure, and the one who receives it. But in order to come to this, we must accept the idea that we may not like the other, disappoint him, that we may have to go into conflict, defend our position.

biological law

We know that not all people are equally kind. At the same time, experiments show that we feel empathy from birth: when a newborn hears the cry of another baby, he himself begins to cry**. Our well-being as social animals depends on the quality of the relationships we enter into. Empathy is essential to our survival as a species, which is why nature has endowed us with this valuable ability. Why is it not always preserved? The decisive role is played by the influence of parents: during the period when the child imitates them, he becomes kinder if the parent shows kindness. Emotional security in childhood, physical and mental well-being contribute to the development of kindness. In classes and families where there are no favorites and outcasts, where adults treat everyone equally kindly, children are kinder: when our sense of justice is satisfied, it is easier for us to take care of each other.

The nature of our anger

It often seems to us that we are surrounded by unpleasant people who dream of harming us. Meanwhile, if you look closely, it turns out that almost all of our contacts with other people are at least neutral, and more often quite pleasant. The impression of widespread negativity is due to the fact that any painful encounter deeply hurts and is remembered for a long time: it takes at least ten thousand kind gestures to erase one such trauma from our memory, argued evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould (Stephen Jay Gould) ***.

There are times and circumstances when we become angry. For example, in adolescence, sometimes there is a craving for cruelty – this is how a desire to assert itself manifests itself, which a teenager cannot express otherwise. In order for this negative period to pass faster, it is necessary that the child as a whole feels safe, does not experience suffering, and is not afraid of the future. If there are no prospects ahead (he is threatened by the lack of housing, work, money), then anger and cruelty may persist. After all, in essence, he faces a struggle for survival, which makes anger quite legitimate. We have the right to be angry if we are attacked by bullies, or in a situation where we are gaining respect for ourselves, resisting harassment or emotional abuse, or when we work honestly, and our fellow competitors “set us up”, fight us with dishonest methods. If the other behaves like an adversary who has entered into an open struggle with us, it is harmful to be soft and sympathetic: our kindness will be evidence that we do not know how to defend ourselves, are not able to force ourselves to be reckoned with.

Moreover, psychologists know such a mechanism of social interaction as “altruistic punishment”, when our sense of justice is combined with the desire to punish those who do not play by the rules. Such anger is constructive; in the long run, society benefits from it. But here it must be remembered that the line between the struggle for justice and gloating is thin: if we rejoice at the ruin of an oligarch, it is not clear whether we feel pleasure because we consider him a robber, or because we envied him and are now glad of his misfortune ****. Be that as it may, kindness does not exclude firmness, is based on self-respect and inner independence, and in ordinary life does not require self-sacrifice from us.

kindness is contagious

In fact, each of us expects exactly this: to be kind and responsive, accepting the kindness and responsiveness of others. The words “solidarity” and “brotherhood” compromised by the Soviet authorities are gradually regaining their meaning. We see it when disasters like the ones we experienced in this summer’s smoke occur. We see that charitable and volunteer organizations are emerging and successfully operating. Mutual aid communities appear, where, for example, children’s things or useful information are exchanged. Young people negotiate via the Internet to let travelers spend the night or find accommodation themselves in a foreign country.

Kindness is in each of us. To start a “chain reaction”, it is enough to make a small kind gesture: hold out a bottle of water, give a compliment, skip an elderly person in line, smile at the bus driver. Do not answer reproach for reproach, shout for shout, aggression for aggression. Remember that we are all human. And that’s why we need an “ecology of relations”. in human solidarity. In kindness.

** M. Hoffman «Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice», Cambridge University Press, 2001.

*** S. Gould «Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History». W. W. Norton & Company, 1994.

**** K. Hoff «Fairness in Modern Society». Science, 2010, vol. 327.