Kindness Highlighted by Joe Moyer
In a recent blog post and his monthly newsletter, my friend and fellow blogger Joe Moyer highlighted the value and importance of acting in kindness.
He states, “Being kind should be at the heart of motivating and connecting with those around you.” I agree. I’m not always consistent in acting this way, but I believe he’s correct and work to “make it so” in all areas of my life.
Sometimes people view kindness not as a virtue, but as a weakness. They fear that if they act in a kind manner, people may view them as weak and attempt to take advantage of them.
Practicing kindness is not an act of weakness but a profound exercise of strength and wisdom. It is a beacon in a dark world, and we all need more light. Be one of the helpers, you will be made better for it.
Joe Moyer
Kindness is About Treating Others the Way You Want to be Treated.
“According to the dictionary … Kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.” Kindness 101. We all want others to treat us in those ways, right?
A practical way of defining kindness is contained in the Golden Rule: Treat other people the same way you’d like to be treated.
It’s not difficult to find tech writers who support the idea of kindness in their writings. They often point to the behavior of fictional character Ted Lasso in the Apple TV+ series of that name.
The Ted Lasso series is an inspiration for viewers on how to respond to people with kindness. When Ted faces a situation where a person attacks him, he doesn’t respond in kind — rather, he responds with gentleness and generosity. He acts with understanding and empathy towards those he knows are experiencing troubles or pain.
2 Areas People Tend to Not Act with Kindness
In my life experience, I’ve seen two areas where people tend to not act with kindness:
- Dealing with people we view as unimportant.
- Dealing with people we disagree with.
a. Dealing with People we View as Unimportant
In our culture, this category includes staff at fast food restaurants, servers at restaurants, receptionists and support staff in businesses and hotels, janitorial staff, and delivery people. Anyone we consider “unimportant” gets treated unkindly.
If you listen to what people say when they’re ordering fast food, the vast majority are brusk and impolite. “I want a hamburger, small fries, and a soft drink.” They treat servers with no respect or appreciation. They don’t treat them as they would want to be treated.
It makes me want to tell them what we used to tell our children, “Please is a nice word!” When they receive their food, there’s rarely a “thank you” expressed.
My wife worked as a receptionist for many years. She says that most people who came in treated her with little kindness or personal interest.
They would barely acknowledge her presence and brusquely state they were there to see someone. When the person came out the visitor would smile, shake hands, ask how their day was going, etc. She had received none of those basic courtesies from the visitor (or many of the other employees).
b. Dealing with People We Disagree With.
Many have written about how discussing differing political viewpoints in our country has become divisive and polarizing. It’s a toxic environment which suppresses the free exchange of ideas.
If someone disagrees with my views, they are demonized and called names. Their viewpoints are labeled as “harmful disinformation” and therefore should be censored. “Cancel culture” has ostracized, boycotted, or shunned those who don’t agree with us. There is little kindness seen in treating those who disagree.
Frankly, I’ve been disappointed to see many productivity/Apple tech writers show this same lack of kindness in dealing with Elon Musk and his purchase of Twitter. Even before the purchase, many tech writers started predicting doom and started getting downright nasty in writing about Musk.
It’s often degenerated to the level of name-calling, and boycotting. I’ve read tech writers who call Musk “stupid,” “idiot,” and “jerk.” Just yesterday I received a newsletter from an app developer who felt compelled to call Musk “certifiably crazy,” and stated that Twitter was now “toxic.” All with no evidence cited. And his comment didn’t have anything to do with the topic of his newsletter.
With some writers I followed it became an almost constant flow of hate speech toward Musk — they became obsessed with nastiness and disrespect. I got so sick of reading it that I dropped some of my RSS feeds. I lost the respect that I previously held for these writers, and didn’t want to expose myself to a constant flow of their negativity and unkindness.
Personally, my gut sense is a lot of this nastiness is based on political viewpoint disagreement. Musk is a controversial political eclectic and can’t be nailed down as either leftist or rightist. That drives people crazy on both ends of the political spectrum. They want him to toe the party line on one side or the other. Since he refuses to do so, and because they disagree with some of his viewpoints, they demonize him. It’s the old dichotomy thinking of “he’s either with us or against us.”
I’m not either a Musk supporter or Musk detractor in general terms. I don’t agree with everything he thinks or does but I do agree with some of what he thinks and does.
The real issue here is not whether you or I agree with him. Rather, it is whether we’ll treat him in a generous, considerate, and kind manner regardless of our political differences. Political differences should not be used as an excuse for unkindness. It’s OK to disagree with Elon Musk, but it’s not OK to express that disagreement in an unkind manner.
Developing Kindness in Our Lives
Kindness is a virtue that we all need to work on. Acting with kindness is not necessarily the most natural way for us to react to people.
Perhaps the best way to develop kindness in our lives is to focus on those areas where we find it most difficult to act in a kind manner. When we deal with “unimportant people” or those we disagree with, we need to notice those situations and consciously seek to respond with kindness.
Acting with kindness toward other people is an ideal — an ideal I know that I will sometimes not live up to. But that’s part of being human. We need to accept our imperfections, and not beat ourselves up when we fail (acting unkindly toward ourselves). We can apologize to those we act unkind toward and say to ourselves, “Oh well, there’s always another opportunity coming to improve our practice of kindness.”