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The headlines are full of horror – but in the world in which people actually live, kindness abounds.
When Lady Macbeth scorns Macbeth for his hesitation to murder with the words “Yet do I fear thy nature/it is too full of the milk of human kindness”, she turns a virtue into a viper.
To Lady Macbeth, the milk of human kindness has curdled Macbeth’s mind. It is an impediment to ambition, and thus a thing to be dismissed as a weakness of the spirit. Not for long though. Duncan would be dealt with, fatally.
Happy endings, however, for the Macbeths were not to be had. Death was the cup from which they would drink. How the milk of human kindness flows through life can often be down to dumb luck as much as deliberate actions from one to the other. Shakespeare’s phrase has a sibling in the words of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’Kindness is the cloth that swathes the body of hope.
It keeps warm our faith in each other.tell of being witness to acts of kindness on public transport. Stranger to stranger, others have helped another when help has been needed. Not asked for, but given. No payment necessary.
Just a hand extended for one needing an extra hand. These actions do not make the news. They are small and simple. A small stitch in the embroidery of a day.
Invisible to all except those there or when communicated to others. Such acts of kindness are also the antithesis and the antidote to the seemingly endless waves of grim and dire news that lap our doorstep day in and day out. Unlike any time in history, we are hostage to knowing more about the troubles of the world quicker than ever before. The world is a village, for both ill and good.
The links in the chain of humanity can seem brittle in such times. Faith in their strength can be tested. No greater test of this faith could be put upon a human than that visited upon Nazism’s victims. No greater example of its strength can be seen than in the words of Anne Frank .
In July 1944, while in hiding with her family, Anne, only 15, wrote: “It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals; they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
” A month later, she, her sister Margot, mother Edith and father Otto were transported to concentration camps. Only Otto survived. In spite of everything … hope floats upon the storm-driven waves of hatred and cruelty. Perhaps everyone should hold a small part of Emily Dickinson close to them:Or cool one PainWarwick McFadyen is a desk editor at
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