Kindness: Need & Necessity
**EASTER Special**
"As we grow up, we get better at the superficial mechanics of kindness – but not necessarily better at understanding why kindness should matter as it does. The subject remains under some of the strict or sentimental cloud beneath which it was first introduced to us as small children. We simply succumb to its dictates more readily and are a little swifter with the cards...
We need kindness so desperately – even its tiniest increments (a door held open, a compliment on a biscuit, a birthday remembered) – because we are, first and foremost, permanently teetering over a precipice of despair and self-loathing. The impression of grown-up self-assurance is a sham; inside, just beneath a layer of competence, we are terrified and lost, unsure and un-reassured – and ready to cling avidly on to any sign, however small, that we deserve to continue...
We become properly invested in being kind when we realize the power we possess in most situations to rescue another human from self-contempt. We start to be kind too when we realize how much we need others to be kind to us. It isn’t an obvious thought. A degree of machismo can feel more acceptable at the outset. We may stoically imagine that we don’t mind at all how others behave, that we aren’t going to allow ourselves to be wounded so easily – with some of the same pseudo bravery of a child who leaves the house on a wintry day without its overcoat. But gradually, we may come to know our own hearts slightly better, and feel our own pains more sincerely – and therefore realize that we are very much at the mercy of all those we interact with...
We don’t ultimately grow kind by thinking about manners. We grow kind by thinking about fear and self-hatred. A kinder world would be one that wasn’t more decorous, but more alive to the presence of despair, to our susceptibility to shame and to our craving for any sign (however small) of our right to exist"
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