Michael Jackson put it best in Man in the Mirror: “if you want to make the world a better place, start with yourself and then change.” Today, on World Kindness Day, 13 November, that sounds almost too easy. In a world that feels more polarised day by day, it actually may be the most radical thing we can do.
I should admit that I don’t trust radical views much, because they rarely make things better. But if I’m honest, the news gives me a headache at the moment. Society feels as if it is splitting apart: outrage, polarisation and aggression get far more attention than empathy.
That is exactly why I think we should become radical after all: in our kindness.
If we zoom in, kindness has an image problem. Scroll through Pinterest and you will find lines like “Always be a little kinder than necessary”: pretty, shareable, easy to skip to the next post. Yet, I still remember the stranger on the subway who paid me a compliment, and the barista who said “enjoy your coffee” and meant it genuinely. That’s when I noticed, even small gestures stay with us. What we tend to forget is that they are decisions, not decoration.
Why radical, then? The word comes from the Latin radix, the root. Radical kindness means going back to the root of how we treat each other, and today that root is tensed. Anger is the path of least resistance: it travels fast, it generates clicks, and it feels like strength.
Pop culture has been telling us this for years. Selena Gomez’s “Kill Em With Kindness” admits the world can be a nasty place, then offers her answer: meet it with kindness. She makes it sound radical too, as well it is. What’s wrong with being the kindest person in the room? Then be so, all the more.
We started learning to read aggression as strength and kindness as weakness. A raised voice signals conviction, while a friendly tone in a heated debate is quickly suspected of lacking a position, or of wanting to be liked. In a feed that rewards the loudest reaction, restraint looks like hesitation. Meanwhile, the logic is backwards. Matching anger with anger takes no effort at all. I mean, holding back the reflex, thinking before you answer and staying composed when someone provokes you takes strength. In this case, kindness is the demanding option, and in a culture that pays for outrage, that is what makes it radical again. Get the loop?
Obviously, this is not about agreeing with everyone or staying silent. We can still name problems, disagree and criticise, which is important. Kindness changes the tone though, rather than your position, and an argument that doesn’t need to humiliate anyone has a far better chance of being heard.
So what do we do when we wake up tomorrow? We can either keep waiting for the tone around us to change, or we can change ourselves. Be the one who answers calmly, who says the compliment out loud, who disagrees without contempt. And If I think about the stranger in the subway or the barista again, ask yourself: how do I want to be remembered?
