zushi's place

I was talking to a friend about the idea of kindness and gracefulness recently. It's been a while since we both agreed on the idea that you really only know how kind someone is when they are under stress, but in that recent conversation I pointed out that sometimes you can observe kindness through small acts that are non-performative.

What is non-performative? To give an example, there's the old saying in dating that you should observe how your date treats the waiter, since it shows how kind your date is when not biased by trying to impress you. However, since this saying has now become universal, the act of how you treat the waiter itself has become performative. That is, your date might treat the waiter nicely to try to impress you.

So now you have to expand what you observe in your date to understand how kind that person actually is. It doesn't necessarily have to be about which person they are kind to though. Kindness can also show through small details, like how patient someone is when an order takes a long time, etc. These acts are usually done without awareness of performance, which makes them better signals of someone's kindness.

Is that all, though?

Thinking back to the people I met in my life, I can point to at least one instance where a friend is quite kind even non-performatively, but her kindness breaks down significantly under stress. When not stressed, she's the type to make all kinds of small gestures one wouldn't think of to make people feel welcome, comfortable, and at home. However, when stressed, she had a tendency to lash out at those immediately surrounding her.

So maybe it is true that kindness is only fully observable under stress after all. It's not a satisfying conclusion, but nevertheless a useful one to keep in mind.

— Categorized under: #kindness, #psychology, #interactions