Kindness

Synchronicity just zips around me constantly. 

This morning's A History of Philosophy reading 

included a Marcus Aurelius maxim on kindness, and I was trying to decide if I had enough energy to sit down at the computer and write about it. I made it to my desk and defaulted to a Facebook check, and in the interim since my Just a Little While Ago previous check, the friendly FB folks had put up a December 21, 2014 Facebook Memory:

"Kindness is just love with its work boots on." 

The House Bunny

Howzzat?

So I suppose I should mention that Marcus Aurelius quote. It goes like this:

" . . . man is made for kindness, and whenever he does an act of kindness or otherwise helps forward the common good, he thereby fulfills the law of his being and comes by his own."

Now that's saying something, isn't it. 

Arguable, of course. 

But then again, what isn't?

When I was teaching I had a student paint a little picture of Philip K. Dick with this line from an introduction he'd written for one of his stories ("Human Is"):

"It's how kind you are."

(The larger context goes like this: 

"To me, this story states my early conclusions as to what is human. I have not really changed my view since I wrote this story, back in the Fifties. It's not what you look like, or what planet you were born on. It's how kind you are. The quality of kindness, to me, distinguishes us from rocks and sticks and metal, and will forever, whatever shape we take, wherever we to, whatever we become. For me, "Human Is" is my credo. May it be yours.")

And I think that that is one of the most beautiful ideas that's ever been written. I would like to believe it's true, and I try to act as if it is true whenever possible. And there's certainly some empirical evidence of its truth. It's hard to get through a day without encountering some small act of kindness.  Sometimes some big acts of kindness. 

Though of course the obverse is also true. 

But what kind of world do you want to live in: one wherein you deal with the frustration and disappointment of people who act like assholes, then have to claw your way back up to optimism, or one wherein you accept the barbarism of your fellow human being and resolve to sleep with one eye open? It is in some ways a true dilemma (as opposed to the concept ensconced in the debased usage of the term which is prevalent these days), but it's pretty clear which one affords you the best night's sleep on a regular basis.

General Rule:

If you think it might be true and it adds to the quality of your life, then why not just go ahead and believe it? I mean, for fuck's sake. We don't have to go out of our way to be miserable, do we?