26: Kindness As Gentle Rebellion
Standing Against Hate-Infused Blindness
I’ll start today’s edition with a statement: kindness is a way to rebel.
And here’s why.
Last week, as was driving to Austria, I had a middle-aged man leave his car to verbally attack me while we were both standing at a traffic light. Not exactly the kind of situation you need as a solo travelling woman in the middle of the night. The encounter lasted maybe five seconds, but it left me a bit shaken up. In case you might be wondering what his reason was to lash out at me like that – turns out that I had accidentally blinded him with my car lights. Well, not ideal, I get it – but it would’ve been a bit more helpful if he would’ve just told me in a normal voice instead of pulling the boring old “I’ll intimidate the hell outta you”-stunt.
Situations like that happen all the time in smaller or larger scale, every day, to all of us. It seems to be so normalised to use anger and hate as a first response, no matter the issue. We’re just going through our day, doing our best – and then all of a sudden, we receive a verbal face slap out of the blue. And all too often, it leaves us a bit shaken up and we carry these situations along as they keep building up inside of us.
This type of unnecessary aggressiveness surely doesn’t come with planned intention, but it has an impact, nonetheless. In other cases, though, it serves a planned purpose.
How does the intentional implementation of hate show up in the collective eye?
We see it happening absolutely everywhere – it’s a tale as old as time. Narratives are built and enemy images carefully handcrafted to legitimise hate, discrimination, and unfair power relations. Tragedies are weaponised to reinforce systems that only stay intact because we silently agree to inequality and exploitation. And hate? Hate works as fuel to turn these frictions into a wildfire.
And when the moment comes where we finally realise that we accidentally helped lighting that wildfire by giving in to the hate, it could already be too late. Hate and negativity are dangerously effective and quickly spread if you know how to. Often, we don’t even realise how it infiltrates our thinking and worldview.
Kindness is hate’s eye-level opponent. And every time we pick the first over the latter, it’s a win.
What does it help to hold onto kindness if there’s so much negativity cursing around? Well, especially then it does make an impact. It’s a way to respond that might do us a healthier service, personally and collectively. And, if you ask me, it’s our only chance against the hate-infused blindness.
It’s not about just seeing things positive. It’s about choosing to stay afloat while the weight of the world tries holding you under. A gentle rebellion and a way to disarm those who use it as a weapon. Let’s remember to keep our eyes open.
Carry-On:
What was the last random act of kindness you experienced?