What can not be called – Weekend – Kommersant
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This word somehow got out of use, I don’t even remember when and for what reason I last met him. There are many similar ones that mean roughly the same thing – “empathy”, for example. Now it has become a lot of this – about how to sympathize with others, lend a shoulder, not hurt – and it’s good that it has become. Only the word “kindness” fell out somewhere, remained in the novels of the 19th century, like “bustle bustle” or “chaperon”.
“How kind he is and how he loves us,” the boy Nikolenka thinks about Karl Ivanovich, even the tassel on the yarmulke seems to be proof of his kindness (as Tolstoy writes at the age of 24), and it seems now that all this is a tassel, a yarmulke, kindness – lay down nearby on a dusty showcase, in the permanent exhibition of the museum-estate. Or else, I remember, this word was often found in late Soviet cartoons (another cultural archipelago that has gone under water). Go, my friend, always go the way of good. The most necessary and dearest of all, the most trusting and strictest in this world is kindness. If you are kind, it is always easy, and when it is the other way around, it is difficult. So go and bet that cartoons program the mind – having seen enough of this at the appropriate age, you remember for the rest of your life that being kind is good. It is not clear only where this goodness is now applied.
Well, that is understandable. There is charity. Volunteering. Help for refugees. It’s great that they exist – because all this systemic-institutional work is arranged in such a way that you don’t have to be kind at all within the framework of this system. Good deeds are done in this way, according to an understandable algorithm, sometimes with a minimum of effort – “send an SMS to a hot number and save a sick child,” and it doesn’t matter at all what the cat Leopold whispered to you in childhood and how your thoughts will be weighed at the Last Judgment . Just do what you must, without unnecessary spiritual and moral gimmicks. None of them will get any easier.
With empathy too – it is clear why empathy. You can work on it, develop it, make it your duty. Decide what is right and do it. The ability to imagine how the other person feels, to look at the situation through his eyes – it definitely works. There is so much tin in the world, if you are able to understand what hurts another, and smooth out sharp corners in advance – it is simply necessary to do this. And this also trains, and does not require exorbitant efforts, and does not depend in any way on what you imagined there, having seen enough of Soviet cartoons.
We have already learned that this capacity for sympathy and good deeds is not infinite. This is a resource, and you need to be able to distribute it correctly: firstly, so as not to run out of steam and not burn out, and secondly, so as not to mistakenly feel sorry for someone who is not right. It happens that empathy still needs to be earned: where power and subordination, privileges and discrimination are present in a hidden form, it is important to reveal this hidden and sympathize with those who are truly hurt. Who should feel bad, according to the binary structure we discovered. And if this opposition is not hidden somewhere under the carpet of social conventions, but is brought out in the most piercing and cutting form, then everything becomes especially acute. When you see a question on social networks, is it possible to sympathize with such and such a group of people, it is clear why he is asked: you need to make a reasonable moral judgment on this matter, condemn this possible sympathy or justify – and, depending on the decision, already sympathize or not. So does it work?
It is foolish in 2022 to refer to Leopold the cat as a fundamental moral authority, but I warned you, this is a dangerous thing: once looked in childhood – and that’s it, it is laid down for life. If this happened to you, you probably remember this collision: mice behave like uniform abusers and aggressors, pull the cat’s whiskers and tail, shoot from a slingshot at the window, threaten its territorial integrity and create an existential threat. And he does not lead with his ear. And not to say that Leopold was especially empathetic towards mice or would show any active participation in their fate. He’s just like that. Wants to live together. Turns the other cheek. Forgives enemies. In 2022, this behavior, of course, looks simply unthinkable – behind it we see, first of all, a manifestation of weakness. Or a criminal misunderstanding of the situation. Or the desire to sit on two chairs – although it would probably seem to Leopold that these are some hostile rodents that put him in front of an impossible moral choice, sawing the chair in two and realizing in advance that the two parts cannot stand separately. In general, all this is politically inexpedient, morally unacceptable and simply suicidal.
Even in a safe, peaceful life with kindness, there are obvious problems. She slips out of my hands. You can’t write an algorithm on yourself, how to educate it and use it; what can it be – “10 life hacks that will allow you to become kind”? It is impossible to train her, it is not clear what exercises to do in the morning to develop kindness. I can’t make it my duty, insert it into the schedule – that’s it, from Monday I become kind. Again, whether to increase the level of goodness in the blood is to eat fiber for breakfast and how it is related to the state of the intestinal microbiome, even British scientists do not know anything about this. Kindness does not fit into modern urban culture, where everything should be technologically and ergonomically, nothing can be done about it, in a variety of ways. That’s when mom put you to bed – how did she develop this soft skill? Does everything seem to happen by itself?
Yes, mom. Sometimes you go, for example, to a bank branch and already turn on a pre-prepared algorithmic monologue inside yourself, mentally fill in the cells in the form extended to you, and then the girl in the window somehow smiles like that. Or say something like that. With this intonation. Or not a girl and not in a bank, but in general it is not clear who. You are not at all familiar with the oncoming boy. And it didn’t cost him or her anything, it’s even easier than sending SMS to a hot number, but this smile and voice somehow change everything, and it happens that they are remembered for a lifetime. Like a cartoon I saw as a kid.
“What a necessary seasoning for everything is kindness,” Tolstoy writes at the age of 63. “The best virtues are worth nothing without kindness, and the worst vices are forgiven with it.” Perhaps this word is also heard so rarely because kindness should be imperceptible, perhaps it should not be called at all. Something for which there are no step-by-step instructions, for which there is no practical application, that in each individual situation, in general, is not necessary for anything, and sometimes it is even suicidal. How to explain what it is for? It doesn’t work – and without it there would be absolutely nothing to breathe, even if all the commandments are observed and all life hacks are followed. How to teach it? No way, you need some kind of disposition to the world, which turns on by the silent click of an invisible toggle switch. Or rather, even if you forget about all the toggle switches in the world. What does it take to become like this? Nothing, you just need to be. All the best books and wise philosophical teachings are about this.
And they’re about the fact that just being is the hardest thing.
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