Have We Lost the Art of Consideration and Kindness?

Where are our manners?

I wake each day with a sunny outlook on life. I am very blessed. I have a husband that I adore; friends and family who are loyal and loving…and honest. We live a good, if simple life with enough. All we have every aspired to is to have enough; not more than our share, just enough. And we do.

I confess that in spite of my optimism, I have become increasingly shocked, worried and dismayed by the world around me. How have we gone from the society I grew up in, where bullies were not…the ideal, shall we say, to a society where they rule and where rudeness is the order of the day?

It’s been going on for a minute now, since the end of the pandemic. I naively thought we would all be so happy to be out and about; in love with life that we’d all hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

Boy, was I wrong.

From gyms to politics to day to day behavior, it seems to me that we no longer have the sensitivity to consider that the person to whom we are speaking has feelings. We seem to have no problem at all demeaning and debasing people at our whim.

It seems a universal phenomenon, in our country at least. From people sitting on gym equipment while amusing themselves on social media without a thought that someone else might wish to use said equipment. And if you ask? You might easily be told to ‘F*&k off,’ rather than them step aside to allow you to grab a set on the machine.

In supermarkets, coffee shops, restaurants, buses, train platforms; from banks to bakeries, rudeness and meanness are on the menu.

What is this hatred about?

Well, I guess you could say that social media has fostered in us this all-powerful attribute of saying what we want, when we want and to whom we want, with impunity. I guess you could blame technology for creating the mass delusion that we can bend the world to our desires; that rules apply to other people, but not us.

A wise teacher of mine once said that we have become self-enchanted with our cleverness and with everything designed to make our lives easier, we now demand and command. From air fryers to google maps, technology has made it easier for us all to develop our own little god complexes, ruling the world from our couches.

And should things not go as we desire, watch out. We lash out; we want to annihilate our perceived enemy. Yikes, right?

I guess as we become more and more spoiled it’s inevitable that the server at a restaurant, a delivery driver, a teacher, a colleague, will become the subject of our ire. If we see the world as subservient to our desires, well, what do we expect? I read a quote (I forget the author, so I apologize for that):…”we are increasingly treating everyone from cashiers to local church pastors like they are really just insubordinate parishioners in our increasingly optimized houses of self-worship.”

Our self-deification is coming at a high cost, from the highest office to the humblest of us, becoming more and more culturally acceptable.

It’s a scary thought when you hear powerful men like Elon Musk with his huge platform say that the greatest human weakness is empathy.

I found this 2000-year-old quote from declining ancient Rome that read “The process of our moral decline began with the sinking foundations of morality which has brought us to the dark dawning of our modern day in which we can neither bear our immoralities nor have the courage to face the remedies needed to cure them.”

So enough whining about it, right? What does it mean to be kind?

We need a re-set. A serious re-set. I know it’s a lot to ask, but we have to step outside ourselves. We have to consider that we are not the only people, walking, driving, working out, shopping. We have to come to the realization that we share life and this planet with other creatures who deserve our respect.

From picking up your dog’s poop from the sidewalk, to stepping to the side of the sidewalk with your cart, wagon or baby stroller so others can pass, the first step toward kindness is to acknowledge that we are all equal and in this thing called life together, that we all share a space on this earth.

Kindness begins when we realize that we are not the only ones. Kindness is a reflection that we are surrounded by fellow humans who have needs and feelings just as we do. Kindness is the opposite of cruelty and callousness, so when we say we don’t care about something or someone, we lose the thread that connects us to other humans.

Look, not to get political, but it used to be that we could take our cues on social behavior norms from people in power. Now, it seems the driving force is who can be the cruelest or rudest; it’s become a race to the bottom. And since we are bombarded with news and social media constantly, cruelty and rudeness have become culturally acceptable; even signs of strength. Loud and mean trumps kind and peaceful.

Personally, I find all of this rather intimidating and I am not easily intimidated, but when the least inconvenience or discomfort can send people from 0 to 60 in seconds, well, I tend to curl up.

But we all have to step up and find our voices again. We cannot let cruelty and rudeness be the order of the day. We need to stand for ourselves and for the voiceless, for all creatures.

How?

We begin by cooking for strength and clarity and that’s where an understanding of food, its nutrition and the energy it creates comes in.

We need sharp mental clarity to make our case for kindness, so it’s sautéed bitter greens with hot spice.

We need stamina to stand up and that means whole grains like quinoa and millet, both rich in strengthening protein and fiber for strong digestion. Strong digestions translates to guts.

We need lots of mineral-rich vegetables, cooked and raw to create strong blood and kidneys so we don’t cave to fear when trying to show kindness.

We need fresh fruit to make us sweet as we set an example to show what true kindness looks like.

Empathy and human kindness do not make us weak; they make us human.