No need to shout
Kindest among us are the quietest about it
When did people start writing Kind regards at the end of emails? I first noticed it five years ago and found it deeply annoying. Then came Warm regards, which is possibly OK if you know me, I suppose. Lukewarm regards is probably more fitting if you don’t.
This is about more than etiquette — which I confess I don’t know much about. This is more the infestation of fake affection. Those who constantly say “Love you babes” are invariably the ones who would happily stab you in the back and quite often wish their partners dead, too.
We know in our hearts the difference between holding the hands of someone frightened and frail and the emptiness of a mwah mwah air kiss. Just as we know the difference between Kind regards and actual kindness.
unspeakable kindness has been all around us. real kindness is not Instagramable. It is not a display. Individuals have been quietly helping out where they can and whenever they can. In communities, volunteers abound. Small acts of benevolence toward neighbours, family or friends, for needs that can range from a thought to a lifeline. Small acts that the healthcare system, even at its most fraught, still embodies on a daily basis.
And yet, there are all sorts of people for whom kindness, rather like “spirituality,” is a cause for self-congratulation and affirmation. The way they talk about it, their “kindness” is rationed rather like a half-hearted food parcel. Take rupert Grint, who played ron Weasley in the harry Potter films and who, like his fellow co-star, opposed the views of the woman who has given him his career, J.K. rowling. he spoke out for the transgender community, he said recently, because he “just wanted to get some kindness out there.” Well, isn’t that lovely?
Are the women who disagree with rupert and his entourage simply being unkind? did the immensely philanthropic rowling — who has been threatened with rape and violence for her views — just have an attack of unkindness when she formulated them?
We’re currently experiencing an epidemic of #bekind on social media, but what is real kindness? Much of what are considered to be feminine traits are indeed acts of random kindness: clearing up after someone else, listening to them, anticipating their needs.
here we are in a situation where we see unkindness at the highest level. We find ourselves in a place where the poor are treated as subhumans who do not know the difference between a couple of cans of beans and a lottery scratch card. They cannot be trusted to feed their own children, hence a voucher system has been replaced by prepared rations and it is left to a soccer player to tell us they are insultingly inadequate.
This view of the poor, not as people with less money than us but as people with fewer morals, is not only unkind but has very real consequences too. Consequences that are at the tip of the iceberg.
Kindness is not just for show. Kindness can and should be built and baked into the system.
Kindness isn’t a meme or something you can just say and therefore be. real kindness saves lives and it makes lives worth living. It is a social glue that so many years of austerity and selfishness have destroyed.
There is no need to fake it. In the darkest of times many of us have seen the real thing and it is colossal. To mean anything at all, it is not just talking the talk but walking the walk. And that goes for government as much as it does for us individuals.