( 8.1/16)
KINDNESS
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
You must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
Lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you.
Naomi Shihan Nye (Arab-American writer, b 1952)
The meaning of this is obvious: empathy is arguably the most important human emotion, more important even than love. Empathy means reaching out and putting yourself into the skin and blood of another human soul. It does not involve feeling sorry for them, it means feeling as if you were them. This is another version of that old saying that in order to understand a man you must walk a mile (or ten) in his shoes.
Who can argue with it? This belief that you must act towards other people as you would want them to act towards you is at the root of Faith – and I am not going to specify which faith, although the Christian faith is my own. But it transcends the separate, disparate religions which have caused so much damage in this world. This Empathy (and I choose to give it a capital letter) is at once at the root of all great religions AND the single thing that has most been betrayed by every damn one of them.
It also transcends the separate, disparate political ideologies which have caused so much damage in this world. What price Empathy to Stalin? Or Pol Pot? Or (God and Allah help us) that evil death-cult that calls itself Islamic-bloody-state? Empathy, is of course, absent when people are murdered in the name of religion or politics. And at the moment I despair of this world because it seems as if the supply of Empathy is running out, like a mine that is empty. Or a river dried up.
Tell me I should not despair. Can you do that for me? I doubt it very much. I turned myself into an advice columnist in 2006 – and now, nearly ten years on, I have no advice to give myself.
Yet I need to be kind to myself, despite everything – and realise that the great, ancient battle between Good and Evil continues, and will always do so. The good have to speak out,incessantly . Even if their voices are drowned. And even if they do not always wear the expected face – for example, the face of the ‘virtue-signaller’ who lacks genuine empathy, but wishes to flag up a great big sign which says, ‘Look at me – I am good.
- The Indian lying dead by the side of the road could certainly be me. Or you. But the words ‘tender gravity’ say so much. For compassion and empathy are so very, very serious, they cannot be contained on a placard which says (to give but one example) ‘Borders Kill.’