Hardcore Kindness

Yes, it can be hard. And yes, it’s worth it.

The Good Samaritan by Luigi Sciallero, 1854 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons CC0 1.0)

“Most of us, I believe, admire strength. It’s something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words — like aggression and even violence.” — Fred Rogers

There are lots of ways for leaders to be cruel.

They can be thoughtless, selfish, impatient, unkind, rude demanding, quick to anger, and more.

Sometimes, a person seems so cruel that we imagine they must spend time thinking up ways to inflict pain on other people.

We’ve undoubtedly heard stories about tyrants and sadists throughout history — take your pick: Nero, Caligula, Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, the Marquis de Sade, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin. 

But the reality is that in day-to-day life, cruelty is easy. Because it requires little to no effort.

You know what does take an effort? Kindness. Empathy. Generosity. Gratitude.

Even if these traits are your nature, they require an action on your part. You have to make an effort to express any of these things.

Doing nothing is easy.

“Gratitude is the flowering of a seed of kindness; ingratitude is the dead inactivity of a seed dropped on a stone.” — William George Jordan, 1902

Ludicrous Mode

I was reminded about cruelty in some posts I saw about the recent layoffs at Tesla.