Within days of writing last week’s post about dealing with nosy questions, I saw a post on a Facebook community group that made me gasp out loud, and left me rethinking the value of the ‘be kind’ message. A woman posted that she had unwittingly lost a lot of weight due to a health issue, and was frustrated by how many people in her workplace were commenting on her weight loss, praising her and asking how she did it. There were lots of great ideas in the comments section for firm but polite ways to say ‘that’s not an appropriate thing to comment on’ without giving details of the health issue that she (understandably) wanted to keep private. But, in a total dismissal, one person in the comments section asserted that the best response was to “be kind” – simply smile, say thanks and walk away, and not let it bother her. There was a lot of pushback on this, but another person argued that the kindest thing to do would be to not make the workmates feel uncomfortable. This is such an on-point example of the way the ‘be kind’ message is sometimes misused.
Ever since World Kindness Day was introduced in 1999, there’s been a big social movement towards treating people with kindness and empathy, and of course this is largely a positive shift. However I’ve noticed there are some occasions where people are mistaking ‘kindness’ for ‘tolerating disrespect’. Allowing someone to make you feel uncomfortable or self-conscious about your body is not a virtue, it is a failure to protect yourself. Telling someone they’ve overstepped and acted inappropriately isn’t being unkind, it’s being assertive and self-respectful.
Another example is a friend of a friend who wouldn’t challenge her boyfriend when he belittled her publicly (and, I assume, privately). He’d gone through a bad divorce previously and she wanted to be sensitive to his feelings given what he’d been through. While it can be helpful to understand the reasons for people’s bad behaviour so we can humanise them, we still need to set boundaries and push back.
Part of the problem in situations like this is that many people confuse being ‘nice’ and being ‘kind’. The latter is a genuine desire to care for others and respect their feelings, often done quietly and without fanfare. The former is often done for the sake of propriety or to show others that you’re a good person or well-behaved. The woman not challenging her boyfriend’s shitty comments thought she was being kind by not making him feel bad about his behaviour. But this was an act of niceness, done to convince him of her goodness, so that she felt more secure in the relationship. When done repeatedly this doesn’t make her a good person, it makes her a doormat.
People often forget that what’s most important in the way we treat other people isn’t intentions, it’s the impact of our actions. Case in point, this Melbourne woman who was given flowers by a random stranger in 2022. The video went viral, and she told the ABC that it was a dehumanising experience. The video creator said his mission was to spread kindness, but he didn’t stop to think about whether the people in his videos actually wanted flowers, or to be part of his gross quest for viral likes, shares and praise. I wonder how many people would have read that story and nodded in empathy for the woman, and how many people would have thought of her as ungrateful for rejecting this display of so-called kindness.
When I think about the person who was having her weight commented on, honestly, it’s baffling to me that there are people who still think it’s appropriate to talk about someone’s body at all, let alone imply they’re winning at life if they’ve become smaller. Even though her workmates’ intentions might have been good – they might have genuinely thought they were paying her a compliment – the impact was not, and that’s what matters most when it comes to how we define kindness. You can have the best of intentions and still cause harm to other people, and your intentions do not absolve you of responsibility for that impact.
I think in general it’s great if people are prioritising kindness in the way they treat other people. What’s not so great is if they’re using it as a vehicle for tolerating poor behaviour, or excusing disrespect. Kindness isn’t intended to be a means to sidestep our responsibility to teach people how to treat us, and it isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card for those who believe their intentions are more important than the impact of their behaviour.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.