Be Kind: Everyone is Fighting a Great Battle

Posted on October 1, 2012 by zoeweil
Image courtesy treehouse1977
via Creative Commons.

Periodically, an essay I write elicits a lot of comments, and when that happens it’s a pretty sure bet that among the thoughtful responses will be a few comments full of vitriol. A recent essay, “Since other animals are predators, why shouldn’t we eat animals?”, was one of those. One responder wrote:

“I truly do feel that you should be free to eat poop. Please start immediately. With any luck for the rest of us in humanity, it will at the very least cut down your time on a keyboard.” 

This was mild (and at least vaguely amusing) compared to some comments I’ve received over the years. Every time I read such commentary, though, I always wonder: Who are these people who write such nasty things? Who resort to name-calling? Who are so full of hate? If I met them, would they be rude and nasty to me in person?

I doubt it.

The great majority of us treat each other civilly when we meet and interact. We are generally polite. But behind our screens and on our keyboards, such civility often eludes us. We feel free to spew our nastiest thoughts at one another. I know how it feels to want to pen my angriest, most judgmental thoughts. I have never written anything truly nasty, but I’ve been sarcastic and snide in writing. I used to make sure that I waited a few hours before sending a letter to the editor about something that made me angry or upset. Often, after calming down, I’d see that my writing wouldn’t advance my cause, that it was reactive, not productive; and I would then modify it before putting it in the mail.

But now our “letters to the editor” are instant responses in the comment sections of Internet sites. Many (most?) of us don’t even proofread our comments; don’t even read them through once before sending them out into the world to do their damage. And they do damage. They prevent real dialogue and discussion. They hamper deeper thought and reflection. They crush creative thinking and problem-solving. They create us and thems and foster hatred.

When next you read something that makes you angry, challenge yourself to respond, not react, with your very best, kindest, and most thoughtful communication skills. Imagine saying those same words if the recipient were looking you in the eyes. Use your words as a gift, not a punishment. Remember the saying: “Be kind, for everyone is fighting a great battle.”

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Get tickets now for the October 13 NYC debut of my 1-woman show — My Ongoing Problems with Kindness: Confessions of MOGO Girl – at United Solo, the world’s largest solo theatre festival.

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Replacing Fear of the Unknown with Curiosity

Posted on August 23, 2012 by zoeweil

I grew up in New York City. I didn’t have much access to the natural world, but when I did find myself in a park or the landscaped environs of the suburbs, I loved it. But I was also scared of the insects and animals I would find. Visiting a cousin who had a huge garden, I was almost immobilized with fear because of the hundreds of bees buzzing all around me. Once, in Central Park, I saw some boys digging up earthworms and those scared me too. On a suburban lawn, a teenager I admired caught a big black shiny cricket and that cricket terrified me. But it was when I went to sleepaway camp in Maine at age nine and discovered that there were bats who flew around inside our bunk at night that I thought I could not possibly bear it.

But each time, my fears were allayed by knowledge. I learned that the bees would not sting me, and I just needed to take care where I walked; that the earthworms were actually amazingly cool, transforming waste into fertile soil; that the crickets were completely harmless and were relatives of the grasshoppers I’d read about in storybooks and loved; and that bats could hear where I was with their sonar and would never choose to fly into me. I also learned that they’d be eating the mosquitoes that would otherwise be likely to suck my blood and leave me itchy at night. And so my fears abated, as they almost always do when we understand.

It’s not surprising we would be afraid of the unknown. Millions of years of evolution have prepared us to fear lots of things that might threaten us, and our fear is a good protector much of the time. But our unexamined fears cause a host of problems. They lead to bigotry and prejudice; insular behaviors and group-think; judgment and assumptions; stagnation and lack of creativity.

Our best corrective to unwarranted fear is curiosity. The more we can approach what is new and potentially frightening with an open and curious mind, the better our chances of learning and understanding rather than judging and assuming. And the greater the possibilities for living harmoniously and sustainably.

Today, try just being curious. Suspend your judgments and assumptions to the greatest degree possible and embrace your capacity to ask questions and learn. See what happens.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Get tickets to the October 13 NYC performance of my 1-woman show: “My Ongoing Problems with Kindness: Confessions of MOGO Girl.”

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What a Difference Kindness Makes

Posted on August 10, 2011 by zoeweil

It seems as if I’m blogging about airport experiences after half of my trips (such as here, here, here, and here). Because of where I live in downeast Maine, I’m dependent primarily on two airlines, Delta and US Air, both of which have – to be generous – serious problems. Not infrequently flights are delayed or cancelled, and I’m unable to make connections. This happened again Sunday night after returning from speaking at the Farm Sanctuary Hoe Down. The delay in Ithaca meant missing the last flight home to Bangor from Philadelphia.

The flight landed five minutes before the Bangor flight was scheduled to leave from a different terminal, but I tried to catch that flight anyway, running at full tilt quite a ways, only to find that the flight I needed to be a bit delayed had left on time.

So I headed over to Customer Service to wait in a line with twenty other people, prepared for an argument about having my hotel covered, and ready for a long haul before bed. When I finally got to the head of the line, I was blessed with Customer Service agent Nicole, who expeditiously rebooked me on a morning flight and got me a room at the Airport Marriott (so I didn’t have to wait for another 30 minutes for a hotel shuttle bus). She was kind, sympathetic, efficient, helpful, and she completely transformed my frustration into gratitude. I told her that in all my years of traveling she was the kindest and most helpful Customer Service agent I’d ever encountered.

The next morning I boarded my (on time!) flight home, and was sitting in a bulkhead seat. Because I had no seat in front of me to stow my backpack, I took out my food bag (I hadn’t eaten yet), Kindle, and water bottle. I was able to put the small bag of food under my own seat, and I just held my Kindle in my lap. Until the flight attendant told me I couldn’t. Nor, she said, could I put it in the compartment on the wall with the magazines. She took it and put it in an overhead compartment. When it was time to serve the passengers drinks, I asked if she could fill my water bottle, but she said she couldn’t. She told me she could bring me water in a cup, but because the whole point of bringing my water bottle was not to waste plastic cups, I said forget it. When the captain turned off the fasten seat belt sign and said we could move about the cabin, I got up to visit with Khalif Williams (IHE’s former director who, coincidentally, was on the same flight, returning from the AERO conference). After just a couple of minutes the flight attendant came up to me and said, “I know you already hate me, but I can’t let you stand here.” She told me I had to return to my seat.

I was feeling very judgmental and irritated, but then she came up to me and explained that someone was on the plane evaluating her and all the procedures, and she had to do everything by the book. She said she didn’t know who it was, and that she was sorry to have to be so nitpicky. Once again, my anger, frustration, and intolerance for a situation I was in was completely transformed.

We never know when we can be transformed, even in frustrating situations; but sometimes, almost magically, a bit of kindness or a simple explanation can make all the difference.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“


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The Scourge of Hateful Commentary – The Call to Be Kind

Posted on January 26, 2011 by zoeweil

Yesterday, Yahoo! News placed an excerpt from my book, Most Good, Least Harm, (that had been posted awhile earlier by Simon & Schuster under the title “10 Easy Ways to Become a Better Person”) on their front page. I found this out when my and the Institute for Humane Education’s websites got a surprisingly large number of hits, and when I started receiving hate mail.

The excerpt was from the end of Most Good, Least Harm in a section which offered a short summation about how to make choices that do the most good and least harm to oneself, other people, animals and the environment. The section was titled, “10 Principles for MOGO Living,” (MOGO being short for doing the most good and the least harm).

Personally, I would never have chosen the new title, “10 Easy Ways to Become a Better Person” for a number of reasons. First, I don’t teach about being a better person; I teach about making choices that do more good and less harm to ourselves and others. Second, the 10 principles are about choices that create a better world rather than better people. But despite the fact that the title could have been off-putting for a list about making MOGO choices, it was hard to believe the staggering outpouring of vitriol that followed. I have never been called so many names before, by people who know nothing about me other than from a short excerpt, taken out of context and given a misleading title, from a book I wrote that is meant to offer people ways to make their lives more meaningful while contributing to a healthier, more just, and more humane world.

The irony was that I’d already written a post for today. It was a short piece with links to several newspaper articles, one of which was the Wall Street Journal’s recent excerpt of Amy Chua’s new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which elicited massive amounts of hate mail itself. I’d read that excerpt, and I, too, felt hostile toward Amy Chua. Now I know better than to judge Amy Chua by an excerpt. I pulled my blog post and wrote this instead.

It can be satisfying to vent our anger, especially from the safety of our computer keyboards, but it is damaging, not just to the recipients of our anger, but to all of us. When we fail to dig into information deeply and explore thoroughly, and when our discourse becomes crass and cruel, we close doors to understanding and learning.

I’ve learned from this experience to be ever more careful about my responses to what I read in the news, and to try, ever more diligently, to be kind.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

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Driving a Nissan Cube – Assumptions & Judgments Revisited

Posted on April 12, 2010 by zoeweil

When I travel and need to rent a vehicle, I always opt for the economy car. I do this for two reasons. The economy car is normally small and relatively fuel efficient, and I want to keep costs low and have never seen a reason for anything but the least expensive rental.

So it was when I was in Detroit at the end of March. I’d been waiting for awhile at the rental office to get my car, and when I finally did, I was a bit dismayed that the car they’d given me was a Nissan Cube (see photo). The car looked like it belonged in a Dr. Seuss book, not on the road in the 21st century. It didn’t look very fuel efficient either (it wasn’t), but having been waiting for a long time and not wanting to be a high maintenance renter, I went with it.

It began to occur to me, as I drove the Cube between Ann Arbor and Detroit, that people would think I had chosen this car and that it was a reflection of me. I began to feel a bit embarrassed and wanted to wear dark glasses and a big hat behind the wheel. Sure enough, when I was stopped at a light in Royal Oak, a family walked by with two middle school-aged boys, and the father and boys stared at my car, and then at ME through the window. Then they began laughing. Laughing! I was just about to roll down the window and explain that the ridiculous thing I was driving was a rental car when the light changed.

Funny the assumptions we make. We assume so much about people based on how they look, what they’re wearing, carrying, driving, and so on. And along with our assumptions come judgments, even though we know next to nothing about those we so quickly judge based on outward appearances.

Years ago, my husband needed to borrow his boss’s Hummer, and he drove it home and into our parking area at the Institute for Humane Education where I work and we live. I was aghast. I told him he had to get that Hummer out of our driveway as soon as possible. After all, what would people think?!

These examples remind me that I need to rein in my assumptions and judgments. While outward choices and appearances may tell us something about people, our assumptions may often be wrong and our judgments misplaced and potentially destructive. I believe that it’s best, as far as we are able, to bring a “beginner’s eye” to all situations and assume nothing. That way, we allow the unfolding of real relationships based on real interactions to eclipse the myriad fantasies that follow our snap judgments and prevent us from connecting, understanding, and communicating.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

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Apologizing for MOGO Choices

Posted on March 15, 2010 by zoeweil

Do you ever find yourself subtly (or not so subtly) apologizing for your out-of-the-mainstream-but-very-conscious MOGO (most good) choices because you want to put others at ease and diffuse any defensiveness or awkwardness? Do you struggle to reassure people that you’re really quite normal even though your ___________ choices (fill in the blank with lifestyle, food, clothing, transportation, product, entertainment, etc.) differ from the vast majority of people in our culture, including theirs? Do you periodically practice a sort of false humility and laugh-at-yourself-for-your-oddball-ways attitude?

I do. I want people to feel comfortable with me and open to what I have to say, not disinclined to include me because of my “weird” choices. I work hard to make sure others who are making different choices than I don’t feel judged or defensive in my presence. I don’t like those feelings any more than they, and I dislike being around judgmental, holier-than-thou, self-righteous people as much as anyone. Plus, I make so many choices that are less than MOGO, so I’m in no position to judge anyway.

But I walk a tightrope between apologetics for what I actually believe are some of my best qualities and inevitable off-putting judgment because my different choices cannot help but contrast with others – implying judgment even when I don’t feel judgmental. My apologies are sincere. I hold two truths simultaneously when, for example, I acknowledge to a host that my food choices have caused them to go to extra trouble, and as I recognize that those choices are made consciously and intentionally in order to minimize the harm and maximize the good I do in the world. I don’t want to be a bother. Yet I do want everyone to “bother” to make more informed, compassionate, sustainable, and peaceful choices in their lives and through their work.

I get tired of apologizing for my MOGO choices, though. It’s like saying I’m sorry for what I consider the best in myself when what I’m really sorry about is that we live in a world in which it’s so challenging to make choices that are truly humane and restorative and peaceful.

What about you? Do you face similar challenges? How do you deal with them?

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind and Claude and Medea

Image courtesy of ell brown via Creative Commons.

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The Susan Boyle Phenomenon

Posted on April 29, 2009 by zoeweil

I’ve been curious, delighted, and dismayed by the media response to Susan Boyle’s instant notoriety after performing on Britain’s Got Talent. Her performance has generated over 60 million views on YouTube, , and she’s become the new singing sensation. But most of the conversation has been around her appearance. Even Talk of the Nation, a radio show that usually covers meaningful issues, devoted a segment to her looks. Recently, the New York Times had an article analyzing the reasons why her looks are such a topic and assessing stereotypes and human psychology. At least now we’re delving into the phenomenon, rather than taking part in Boyle-bashing based on looks.

My curiosity revolved around the speed at which one woman’s unlikely success became an international phenomenon. As someone who’s trying to gain media attention for efforts in humane education and the MOGO principle, and who has come to realize just how difficult this is, it’s remarkable to watch what can happen when someone becomes a media sensation overnight.

My delight revolved around Susan Boyle’s success based on talent, not on beauty, wealth, youth, or whom she knew.

My dismay revolved around the overwhelming focus on her appearance, including the specificity of the critique. There was an inordinate amount of attention paid to her frizzy, greying hair and bushy eyebrows, which infuriated me. She is being criticized for leaving the hair that grows on her body alone, instead of buying products to change it and removing parts of it to meet conventional standards of beauty. Listening to a debate on the media about what sorts of makeover would be appropriate, I found myself alternately shifting from outrage to wonderment. Is this really what we care about? Is this really the topic of the day? With all the pressing issues of our time, we readily turn our attention to the grotesquely unimportant: Susan Boyle’s physical appearance and what she should do about it.

I keep wondering what we could do to generate this kind of attention for humane education and MOGO living. Every idea that could generate media attention seems ridiculously gimmicky and lacking in integrity. So dear readers of this blog, any suggestions for creating a media phenomenon for MOGO?

~Zoe

Image courtesy of ITV.

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That’s the Funny Thing About Judgments and Assumptions…

Posted on April 24, 2009 by zoeweil

This past weekend I led a MOGO Workshop at Bard College. My car had broken down the night before, and so I borrowed my niece’s SUV to drive to the workshop from my brother’s house ninety minutes away. I begin MOGO workshops by exploring assumptions and judgments. I ask participants their impressions and assumptions about me carrying different bags: a Tiffany & Co. bag, a Victoria’s Secret bag, and a WalMart bag. The judgments fly. I’m alternately told I’m rich and vain, sexy and slutty, and poor and (believe it or not) evil — and lots in between. This particular workshop, I had the opportunity to ask the audience what they thought of me when I told them that I drove an SUV there. I asked them to be honest. Some were clearly disturbed. What sort of hypocrite was leading a MOGO workshop and driving an SUV? Others, wanting to like me (after all, they’d just paid money to learn from me!), tried to give me the benefit of the doubt. Maybe because my drive from Maine was so long, and because there was so much to bring to the workshop, I needed the big gas guzzler, one participant offered kindly. MOGO wasn’t about being perfect one lovely young woman reassured me and the audience.

There was clearly a sense of relief when I revealed that my car had broken down and I’d borrowed the SUV. One high school girl exclaimed, “I knew it!”

Funny about our judgments.

And so I asked the group to park their judgments and assumptions at the door, and to assume just one thing: that everyone in the room had something to teach them and that they had something to teach everyone in the room. I’m confident this proved true.

~Zoe

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