Teatime: What’s the point in being kind?
This is part of a weekly column in which we talk about anything under the sun
Whenever Kindness Day SG comes around, my friends and I would joke about how Singaporeans are so unkind that we need a whole day set aside each year to remind us not to be trash human beings.
On May 13, the Singapore Kindness Movement commenced celebrations for the 12th annual Kindness Day SG, and it made me wonder – what’s the point in being kind anyway?
For one, it feels as though our society rewards self-serving behaviour. Take, for example, Michael Jordan and Steve Jobs – they have two things in common: they were incredibly successful in their fields and they were notoriously not very nice.
And it's not like this is a foreign notion. Whenever someone successful or renowned is described as nice, the reaction most people would have is one of surprise, almost as if to say, “Wow, I can't imagine how they got rich and famous by being nice.”
Plus, the dopamine rush you might get from an act of kindness is easily outweighed by how thankless being kind can be. How many times have you held a door open for someone only for them to not even nod in appreciation?
More often, kindness is just a guise to get what one wants than a genuine attempt to make the world a better place. Those TikTokers you see posting videos of them feeding the homeless and giving money to the poor aren’t doing it out of compassion, they’re doing it for the clout.
Ultimately, it just doesn’t work if everyone else but you acts in their own selfish interests, and how can you be sure that the person next to you on the train didn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed?
But imagine a world where everyone was kind – not out of obligation or expecting kindness in return, but out of compassion and empathy.
It’s a utopian vision, sure. But it’s one in which kindness would be a fundamental principle that guides how we interact with each other.
In such a world, it would be so normal to encounter kindness that there might not even be a word for it.
Perhaps that’s why we need a day dedicated to kindness. For one day a year, we can feel what it would be like to live in a world like that.
Who knows? We might find ourselves liking it enough to make it an everyday reality.
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