Delphic Maxim 93: Deal kindly with everyone
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.
93. Deal kindly with everyone
There are plenty of mornings when I read the maxim I need to write about and I think that it’s just hopelessly naive. Life has changed in the last few thousand years since they were carved into the temple at Delphi, and these days — surely — we need to be a little more cutthroat? I don’t know that this is necessarily the case, and I definitely think today’s maxim is more relevant now than it was back then, if only because of the sheer number of people we deal with.
If you work in an environment where you deal with people — and that’s the case for pretty much everyone — you’ll be familiar with the feeling of grouchiness that sometimes brings. We have a tendency sometimes to expect the worst from people, and that leads us to judge their motivations, or pre-judge the quality of an interaction. The people who thrive best around other people are the ones who are most open to kindness. You know the types: bubbly, effervescent people who seem to get joy from talking to anyone.
Almost one hundred percent of the time, even though I usually dread meeting someone I haven’t met before, it turns out far better than I expected. When I’m working with students, it’s because I automatically drop into a sort of collegial mode: we’re here to learn together, and kindness breaks the ice. When I used to work in the devil’s industry — retail — I would have a better time dealing kindly with a customer than if I let myself fall into conflict.
Kindness is a fairly under-utilised word. Seven years ago the buzzword was ‘tolerance’, then it became ‘acceptance’ and ‘compassion’. All of these are fine, if a little lightweight, but kindness describes a quality of humanity that encompasses all of the above. It doesn’t preclude disagreement, even vigorous disagreement, at all. But it does insist on treating other people with dignity, respect and civility. It is an appeal to our better natures.
When I think of some of the most compelling radical figures in history, I can’t separate their identity from a sense of kindness and care.
The Brazilian radical educator Paulo Freire is always the first that comes to my mind. He was articulating the radical conscientisation of the poor in Brazil — a process of learning to name their world so that they could also name the injustices that they suffered. This commitment to learning, a revolutionary kind of learning, came from a place of righteous anger, which Freire called radical love. Freire has this kind of Marxian Santa Claus-y appearance, his kindness is written across his character (and his books — such as Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the Politics of Education, and Pedagogy of Hope — are all deeply kind and caring, despite their radical agendas).
There is space for kindness not only in our daily lives, but in our politics and even in our anger. Kindness is a disposition and a value we carry into the world. Dealing kindly with everyone is a challenge, but it gets easier with practice.
