Is it making you kinder?
To my mind, this is a good question to ask about any grievance you’re nursing, habit you’re falling into, interaction you’re having with another human, or environment you’re putting (or keeping) yourself in.
Is it making you kinder?
And if not, what’s it doing?
You can savor a grudge, marinating for months or years in how right you are and how wrong someone else is. It might feel great.
You can choose a cutthroat career path that requires stepping on lots of people on your way up.
You can choose your political beliefs based on animus toward some particular group of people, and find others to bond with who feel just as you do. There’s probably already a club for all the people who hate whoever you hate.
Is it making you kinder?
You can read celebrity gossip, where people’s relationships and life choices are held up for public scrutiny (often with the assent and encouragement of those being scrutinized, who realize there’s money in notoriety). It’s a common fixation, so you’ll never be at a loss for conversation.
You can walk through life staring down at your phone screen, as so many do.
You can drive as fast as you want, cutting off as many cars as you please, endangering as many lives as you’d like, to get where you need to go. Assuming you don’t die and have enough money to cover the speeding tickets and insurance premium increases, there aren’t many downsides. You’ll reach destinations faster and fit more into your schedule. Since you are a Very Important Person, this matters.
You can never give a thought to anyone who isn’t you.
But is it making you kinder?
This train of thought was prompted by an experience I’ve had myself and also witnessed others having, which goes something like this:
- One way or another, you get into a toxic situation.
- Instead of getting out of the toxic situation, because that seems hard and you pride yourself on your toughness and ability to “stick it out,” you stay.
- In order to make the toxic situation survivable, you find or create an adversary to work against and let aggression become your animating force.
- Once you have an adversary, you dig even further into the toxic situation because ‘losing’ by removing yourself from it would be too much of a ‘win’ for whoever you’re working against.
I think one of the great unkindnesses we can do to ourselves, one of the greatest affronts to our own dignity and violences to our own soul, is to put ourselves in a situation that encourages or even requires our unkindness toward others. Is the environment you’ve planted yourself in making you more or less kind? Is it making you think ill or well of others? Is it dissolving resentments or allowing them to fester?
Whenever I find myself wanting to send harsh thoughts or words toward others, I wonder why I’m so unhappy. I wonder what’s going on with me.
If your self-concept or survival seems to depend on demonizing or dehumanizing someone else, I think you’ve accepted a bad deal. I think you’ve accepted a false choice. You don’t have to stay. You can leave. At any time, you can go somewhere else.
You don’t have to participate in a dynamic so toxic that even just hanging in there, staying around, means poisoning yourself.
You can part ways with a place, a relationship, or a thought.
Yes, you are tough. If you needed to, you could stay: I’m sure of it.
But why would you? Why should you?
You’re what you’ve got. You’re all you’ve got.
So, in matters large and small, I try to consider this:
Is it making me kinder?
It’s a simple enough exercise, so you’d think I’d have it mastered by now.
But the trick is that the question only works when I remember to ask it.