I’ve been in talk therapy since last August and learned a few new things. The one that shocks me the most is that it’s not intuitively obvious that kindness is right. In my experience of life, the ideal is not to dominate or submit to others in relationships, but instead to understand each other in an egalitarian way. That is, if we can’t reason with each other in a sort of dialectic of love and compassion, and rather dictate to each other as parents to children (or supplicate to others as children to parents), then civilization is in peril. My whole world would fall apart if I came to think in purely “masculine” or “feminine” ways in relation to other people. There is a higher mode of relating to others, and that is adult-to-adult (after Eric Berne, who invented Transactional Analysis).
I don’t know about you, but I loathe being either talked down to or up to. I enjoy discussing life rationally with everyone. WE ALL HAVE A SAY in the democratic scheme of things I believe in. I know, the word Utopia literally means “nowhere,” meaning a perfect world is not for real. But what you and I can do is to teach each other and learn from each other on our life’s way. Giving people permission to express themselves, listening to what they say and responding rationally is IMO a sort of kindness and caring. I hate being devoured in a conversation; how about you? Isn’t it wonderful not to be interrupted, let alone walked on by other people? You can repay such kindnesses by doing the same for still others.
Okay, that’s it. End of sermon. Hope you have a good day 