Member-only story
How To Be Kind To The Unkind
Kindness can take very strange shapes, and yet, for some of us at least, it would be stranger not to be kind just because we can. Are you in?
Plenty of us would rather be kind to others. It’s in us. It’s us.
It is common for people like us to expect others to be just as kind. If we can be, why wouldn’t everyone else? So when we’re faced by unkindness or downright nastiness, we’re either left with a lack of understanding towards our fellow humans or the temptation of anger and retaliation.
As Anita Lane and Blixa Bargeld wrote and Nick Cave sang, there is a strangeness to kindness. On my book New Society, in the middle of the whole alien invasion and subsequent demise of humanity, several characters express their astonishment when they’re suddenly presented with kindness in the most unlikely of circumstances.
Kindness is strange. Kindness is uncommon. Kindness is challenging. And our culture seems to be veering dangerously away from it as fast as it can. Be tougher, be harsher, be crueler — hard times require hard people. And if kindness is strange, that which is classified as strange is also being fought left, right and centre by the majority of us and our elected leaders.