REFLECTIONS ON KINDNESS

REFLECTIONS ON KINDNESS

(Picked from the internet, originally from the book 'the best care possible' by Ira Byock with some additions)

A very popular tweet read something like this- "the older I get, the more I realise that the only barometer of intelligence is kindness".

It's easy to learn a skill through adequate training, it's even easier to gain education, but it's next to impossible to "teach" kindness. It's always a conscious choice one makes- to not let her emotions get the better of herself. That control, that self awareness, the power to make that difficult choice is a marker of true intelligence.

In fact, when anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked what was the first sign of civilization, she answered, "a healed femur".

A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. Without modern medicine, it would ordinarily take 6 weeks for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them and offered them protection until the injury could mend.

The law of the jungle works on the principle of survival of the fittest, and where that operates, no healed femurs can ever be found. The first sign of civilization is compassion (or kindness), seen in a healed femur.

Modern humans are called Homo sapiens, the wise man. The reason we survived and thrived, despite possessing the worst possible anatomy in the animal kingdom, is only because we could extend kindness to our fellow beings :)