“It is much harder to be kind than clever.”
I thought of this statement while reading the posts that have been sprouting up for the last couple of days, commenting on 双流 ’s story based on her real-life experiences.
I, for one, have really enjoyed her story and appreciated her willingness to share her experience. It is through her candid and unpretentious writing that I was able to catch a glimpse of her experience with vividness. There is no question, 双流 writes well and has a gift for story-telling. Yet, it wasn’t just her writing skill that made her story so appealing to me, it was her willingness to share her inner world so intimately, truthfully and vulnerably that pulled me in. Her honest expressions of her feelings made her story that much richer, that much fuller, that much more real, and without which, the story would have just been another beautiful, yet empty and fleshless shell.
Even though I don’t have the same life experience as her, it does not stop me from resonating with her emotions, for emotions are universal. Who among us has not experienced feelings ranging from joy, wonderment, excitement to frustration, loneliness and pain? It is often the emotion behind the experience that connects us all. And when someone is so generous as to open their emotions up and share them so truthfully in their writing, it is like a gift, to the reader.
It is through 双流 ’s vulnerability, revealed in her writing, that I see a real human being, who lives her life, searches, asks questions, reflects on her experiences, wonders about the meaning of it all, just like the rest of us; And what impresses me the most, is the fact that she is able to face that part of her life honestly and she sees no reason to hide her true feelings when telling her story. She is not here to tell a story of the bravado, she is here to tell a first-person account of her unique life experience. In her vulnerability, I see much courage, for it takes courage to show the real person behind all the masks, let alone showing the real “you” so publicly on a discussion forum.
So it is with some surprise that I started reading some of the ensuing posts written in reaction to 双流 ’s story. I must admit that I was appalled by the language and the judgmental tone of some of the comments; I was almost ready to write reply posts and tell the posters to get off their high horse and stop drawing up conclusions based on faulty assumptions, and most of all, to stop making hurtful remarks about someone else’s characters and someone else’s life.
In the midst of all that, I remembered a story, told by Jeff Bezos, founder and the CEO of Amaon.com, which helped to put my view in perspective.
As a child, Jeff often spent his summer with his grandparents. He was a restless and intelligent child who was good at calculating. One day, he saw an antismoking ad on TV, the announcer declared that a smoker was shortening his life span by two minutes for every minute he took a puff of a cigarette. This information caught Jeff’s attention as his grandmother was a smoker. After much calculation, Jeff concluded that his grandmother was taking 16 years off of her life by smoking. The next time the three of them traveled in the same car, Jeff made his announcement just as his grandmother lit up a cigarette: “You’ve taken sixteen years off of your life from smoking.” he then proceeded with his explanation of the math. His grandmother bursted into tears.
Jeff’s grandpa, who had been driving in silence, carefully pulled to the side of the road. He got out of the car and asked Jeff to follow. After several minutes of walking in silence, his grandfather stopped and looked at him, put his hand on his shoulder and said: “You’ll learn one day that it’s much harder to be kind than clever.”
As I thought of that story, my anger slowly dissipated. I remembered that years ago, in my twenties and early thirties, I was once harsh as well, unforgiving with my words, I was critical of others yet I thought I was being helpful with my sharp words. I thought I knew much more about things than I actually did, my view of the world was black and white; I highly prized the notion of being intelligent and thought of things such as vulnerability as a sign of weakness.
Yet, over time, life and experiences taught me otherwise. Gradually, I learned some things that I never would have agreed with in my arrogant younger years.
I’ve learned that my “truth” isn’t necessarily everyone else’s truth;
I’ve learned that my subjective opinions of others and the world are just that, they are subjective and not universal;
I’ve learned that the world isn’t made up of the color black and white, there is such a place as grey area;
I’ve learned that everything happens in the world doesn’t always have to be categorized as right or wrong;
I’ve learned that kindness, along with respect and acceptance of others, come with wisdom.
And most of all,
I’ve learned that it is much harder to be kind than clever.
We all have the freedom to speak our truths, yet this freedom is not unlimited, use it with discretion. Our desire to speak our thoughts truthfully needs to be balanced with consideration and kindness to others. Speaking our thoughts truthfully is a privilege, sprinkle it with kindness, and always keep in mind that silence is gold when we have nothing kind to say.
I’ll end this post with Jeff Bezos’ own words of the lesson he learned from his grandfather on that day:
“I had always admired my grandfather for his intelligence, but that day I began to understand that his intelligence was only a gift that he had been given. It was the kindness with which he chose to apply it that he could be proud of. It’s something I’ve been working on ever since.”
百家争鸣和措辞不伤人不是对立的--续贴
谢谢大家赏读我的帖子。我刚才出去了一次，才回来。跟帖我都仔细读过了。无论是支持我观点的跟贴，或者是不同意我观点的，我在这里都谢谢了。
我想说的是，我在帖子里表达的是我自己的价值观，抒发的是我自己心里的一些感受。如果，你对我的文章有共鸣，那我也觉得欣慰，毕竟，知音难觅么。如果，你对我的观点不予苟同，我也谢谢你留贴抒表己见，我尊重你不同的价值观，和属于你自己的独特的经历。我的文章原来也不是为了改变别人而写的，因为我知道，我没有这个权利，也没有这个能耐。
我想借此机会，阐清一下我的观点。首先，我从来不反对百家争鸣 （如果有兴趣的话，请再仔细看一看我的文章），我反而非常提倡它，因为这是思想和言论自由的表现。我在文章里指的是具体表达思想论点的方式，方法，不是论点本身。在论坛里帖帖子，我倒是希望看到不同的思想观点，而且多多益善，这样更可以敲击出思想上的火花。每个人当然有选择自己表达方式的自由，但我的底线是不伤害到别人的感情，不人身攻击，不乱插标签，就事论事，不把事和人混在一起。讨论可以激烈，观点可以不同，但是语言上不要伤人。
我认为，说话不伤人和直抒己见不是对立的，为什么一说到要注意一下措辞，就说限制个人发表意见，就说要戴面具。如果，你不戴面具的时候说的都是伤人的话，那岂不可怕，我倒是宁愿相信那是你对自己的误解。如果你觉得自己的观点一定是要用伤害人的话才能表达出来的，那么，我只能说问题可能是出在communication skill上面了。Speak honestly and truthfully with kindness 不是一句矛盾的话，如果你认为是矛盾的，那么你对honesty 和kindness的定义与我的不同。
还有，关于kindness和cleverness这两个概念，与我而言，也不是对立的，不是说强调了其中一个，就要舍去另一个，两个可以同存，如果真的能够两者兼顾，岂不更好。
在论坛上，大家各有各的观点。在阐清自己观点的同时，也谢谢大家的讨论。
