“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 雙流 ’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, 雙流 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 雙流 ’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 雙流 ’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.”
百家爭鳴和措辭不傷人不是對立的--續貼
謝謝大家賞讀我的帖子。我剛才出去了一次，才回來。跟帖我都仔細讀過了。無論是支持我觀點的跟貼，或者是不同意我觀點的，我在這裏都謝謝了。
我想說的是，我在帖子裏表達的是我自己的價值觀，抒發的是我自己心裏的一些感受。如果，你對我的文章有共鳴，那我也覺得欣慰，畢竟，知音難覓麽。如果，你對我的觀點不予苟同，我也謝謝你留貼抒表己見，我尊重你不同的價值觀，和屬於你自己的獨特的經曆。我的文章原來也不是為了改變別人而寫的，因為我知道，我沒有這個權利，也沒有這個能耐。
我想借此機會，闡清一下我的觀點。首先，我從來不反對百家爭鳴 （如果有興趣的話，請再仔細看一看我的文章），我反而非常提倡它，因為這是思想和言論自由的表現。我在文章裏指的是具體表達思想論點的方式，方法，不是論點本身。在論壇裏帖帖子，我倒是希望看到不同的思想觀點，而且多多益善，這樣更可以敲擊出思想上的火花。每個人當然有選擇自己表達方式的自由，但我的底線是不傷害到別人的感情，不人身攻擊，不亂插標簽，就事論事，不把事和人混在一起。討論可以激烈，觀點可以不同，但是語言上不要傷人。
我認為，說話不傷人和直抒己見不是對立的，為什麽一說到要注意一下措辭，就說限製個人發表意見，就說要戴麵具。如果，你不戴麵具的時候說的都是傷人的話，那豈不可怕，我倒是寧願相信那是你對自己的誤解。如果你覺得自己的觀點一定是要用傷害人的話才能表達出來的，那麽，我隻能說問題可能是出在communication skill上麵了。Speak honestly and truthfully with kindness 不是一句矛盾的話，如果你認為是矛盾的，那麽你對honesty 和kindness的定義與我的不同。
還有，關於kindness和cleverness這兩個概念，與我而言，也不是對立的，不是說強調了其中一個，就要舍去另一個，兩個可以同存，如果真的能夠兩者兼顧，豈不更好。
在論壇上，大家各有各的觀點。在闡清自己觀點的同時，也謝謝大家的討論。
