On Kindness (Part 1, Chapter 1-3)
Language for Animals VOLUME ONE (The Eonothem.§.2.❡.2.8.) Section Two
Part One
1
Kindness & Understanding
Kindness is a listening, a form of understanding sometimes called empathy but beyond empathy and beyond rationality. It is an understanding of what is between.1
Empathy, if kindness, is not confusing. Mostly, empathy is something we don’t understand because it is incomprehensible. It’s incomprehensible because we can’t understand it; that’s what incomprehensible means. Understanding involves a total embodiment of another’s state of mind. That might be impossible. Empathy is confusing because impossible things are also confusing. I feel what you feel but cannot fathom why. I can rationally explain this to myself, without asking for further information, but this rational pseudo-understanding, coupled with the shared emotion, still does not result in an understanding that breeds kindness. An understanding that breeds kindness isn’t baffled. Or if it is baffled, it’s at peace with bafflement. The definition of unbaffled is: one who is at peace with bafflement. Rational understanding, an understanding you can articulate to yourself or others, doesn’t always matter. Understanding as kindness does matter, but may be confusing and impossible, unless coupled with the ability to describe and summarize, via rationality, at least to yourself.2
You may possess this ability to explain things, or you may not. Nice if you do, as it grants you the ability to explain to others (or yourself) your understanding, and perhaps then spread a kernel of understanding to another. With this kind understanding, your words will be right. They will be the words that the other person needs to hear. Or maybe you don’t understand, and arrive at those words purely by luck.
Who knows? I don’t know.
2
Am I Kind?
What am I doing here? Where am I?