Aim for a State of Kindness

0 0 0 0

“Love is like war — easy to begin but very hard to stop.” -H.L. Mencken

This quote from the “Sage of Baltimore” is one of my lifelong favorites. Mencken (1880 – 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, and is considered to be one of the most influential writers of the first half of the 20th Century.

Mencken was also a renowned critic of American culture. He used his gift for words to hold a mirror up, to reflect what he saw as real disconnects manifesting in the U.S. One of those disconnects is how we talk about war in America.

We’ve used “war” rhetorically for well over a century in the U.S. We’ve had the War on Poverty, a War on Drugs, an ongoing War on Cancer, and the War on AIDS.  During the last presidential election season, “war” became the watchword to label anyone simply sharing her point of view:  War on Coal, War on Creationism, War on the Environment, War on the Unborn, the War on Women, and a seemingly endless stream of other war cries designed to shock and awe us into paying attention.

The 2016 presidential election cycle is more nuanced, arguably more hate and fear-filled. Disagreement is the new war cry.

If Mencken was right and love is like war, easy to begin and hard to stop, how can we start spreading love?

Let’s start simply by aiming for a state of kindness, a state in which we hold tension in such a way that we don’t have to agree on everything or anything, really, to continue being kind to one another. To achieve a state of kindness, we must (re)learn how to disagree.

Disagreement Quotes: Toward a State of Kindness

“The best practice is to be around people who absolutely disagree. Grace in conflict is a study in love.”
― Bryant McGill , Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“The most tragic cause of social disharmony is when the speed with which people find mistakes of others outweighs their simple belief that they too are infallible!”
― Israelmore Ayivor , The Great Hand Book of Quotes

“Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.”
― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

“He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche , Human, All Too Human

“You must be able to say “I understand,” before you can say “I agree,” or “I disagree,” or “I suspend judgment.”
― Mortimer J. Adler , How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”
― Bertrand Russell