Fierce kindness

Today's piece was going to be vastly different.

In my snarky way, I was going to have a Festivus thread, where the airing of grievances would take center stage.

Then, on my lunch break yesterday, I watched this from CBS Sunday Morning:

I've always said: Do not call me "nice". I take that as the grossest of insults.

Nice is fake. Nice is politic. In Shakespeare's time, "nice" was an insult. Nice is what you are to someone's face, to garner kudos, while disparaging them behind their backs. Nice is giving a homeless woman a dollar bill, then voting against any measure which would alleviate homelessness because it would inconvenience you.

I'm not perfect. You know I'm not. And my wife reminds me of that every day. And I fall short of my own standards more than I care to admit. But what I try to keep uppermost in my mind, every day, is to be kind. To greet a person not as I would wish to be greeted, but as they need to be greeted. To let them know that they are human, and precious. 

Kindness isn't easy. And so many people are hard to be kind to. I can't say that I comport myself admirably at all times. When I need to be hard, to protect others, I am hard. My kindness isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. Actions and words have consequences. Ask anyone whom I've 86'd from the library.

But after you've suffered the consequences, I'm here. I'm here to listen. I'm here to lean on. I'm here to give you another chance. I'm here to remind you that as long as you have breath, you have a chance to make things right. This goes for you. This goes for me.

Our civilization has been degenerating for decades. And by "degeneration", I speak not of what right-wingers speak. I don't speak of feminism, or of the fight against racism, or of the uplifting of our gay brothers and sisters. I speak of a deadening of the human spirit. I speak of churlishness towards human beings who are neither worse nor better than we are. I speak of a paucity of human feeling and human connection. I speak of a demonization of the "Other".

Democracy cannot survive without a return to kindness. Civilization cannot survive without an acknowledgement of our common humanity. 

For Monday's post, I featured the article with a picture of Earthrise from the Moon. That's it. That's all we have. This bright blue jewel suspended in the heavens. We have no other home. And this is all our home. It is as much the home of the mentally disturbed homeless man braying on the corner as it is that of Jeff Bezos. Aside from social standing, there is no moral difference between them.

If we hairless apes are to survive our ever-increasing technology, we have to develop wisdom commensurate with it. We need to embrace a fierce, radical kindness. We need to accept and interiorize that all of us are only as strong as the weakest among us. Because it's true. You think you live a good life behind your gated community. But how much better would your life be without the necessity of gates? How much better would your life be if, for pennies on the dollar, you could alleviate the world's suffering? This is my utopia, but it's within our grasp. It requires merely a change in thinking.

The holiday season is called the season of peace. But peace shouldn't be for a season, or a day. Peace should be the default for our civilization. We are no longer burdened by scarcity. We grow and produce enough to provide comfortable lives for all of humanity. Our work, and that of those who come after us, will be to bring this to fruition.

You may say that I'm a dreamer. But I'd like to think I'm not the only one. The politics of "us" and "them" will lead only to the grave. The times call for a militant kindness.