Kindness Builds Community | Simon Sinek

Kindness doesn't hold the same etymology and origin that it does in English. So in most languages, kindness can be traced to generosity and benevolence. In French, I think it has a very similar meaning. In Arabic, there's a word that's like, held very deeply. It means to be like of service, to be generous, to be kind. In Chinese, there's a word in Russian you go through. In Greek, all of them, they all come back to generosity.

Generosity or service.

Not generosity, benevolent service. All of them. But it's all different in the different languages. The origin of kind I find very interesting in English because I think it gives us an insight into what might be missing in today's world. And it. It's what makes it complex. Humankind, the same kind, Kindred, my kin. That's literally where it comes from in English, we are the same kind. You trace the word back. And the word kind came from saying, you are me and I am you. That's where it came from. And so when we are saying we are being kind to one another in English, the origin of it meant, I am seeing you as me, and I'm believing that you are seeing me as you. Right. And as I've been thinking about it, I've been going, oh, that's probably why we're struggling to live in a world that is kind, because for various reasons, we now live in a world where everyone is the audience of one. Do you know what I mean?

And we see each other as more different.

Yeah, but that's what I mean by audience of one.

And if kindness is if the kindness and etymologically the foundation of community, then how can we ever be a community? There's no such thing as community or tribe or belonging or safety. Without kindness, the two literally are impossible to have. Kindness is the thing that creates the feeling of safety.

Yes. Because we have to be the same. So, okay, I'll give you a simple example. Yesterday, everyone's having every different conversation. Everyone's talking about everything. Musicians, artists, business people, you name it. It was fascinating to see what happened when the tweets between Elon Musk and Donald Trump came out. We all became the same kind. That moment connected everybody. Everyone started saying, did you see what happened? Did you see what happened? Oh, my God. What do you think? But. But what I find most fascinating in that moment is that everyone. Everyone became the same kind. And I realized that those moments are more valuable than we think, because as we live in a world where everything is becoming for you. Right. Your Internet page is for you. Your Algorithm is for you. Your TV shows are for you because you stream. You don't even have to watch things at the same time as everybody else. Like when I grew up, I had to watch what my parents were watching and sometimes they had to watch what I was watching because that was the tv. Now you live in a world where every single person in a household can watch whatever they want, how they want. And while that's great for your personal enjoyment of life, it means you are less of the same kind, you know, so now you don't have the same reference, you don't have the same joke, you don't have the same news, you don't have the same story. And if you live in a world like that, how do you then think that the other person deserves what you deserve or thinks what you think?

It goes back to sacrifice, which is to be kind. I have to give something up of myself, for myself, for someone else. In this moment, I have to watch my parents TV show even though I don't want to, because that's, that's the deal. You may not have seen it as kind and, but you could have gone away, but you didn't. You sat on the couch and just watched. Yeah, you were just there because it was nice to be as a family. So does kind. And we heard it again. I'll go back to, you know, me, you know, the, the missionaries who were kind to rescue her and her mother put themselves at great sacrifice. And their sacrifices of life, their sacrifices of humiliation, their sacrifices of being rejected from your own tribe by putting yourself out there, that these acts of kindness.

Are highly risky because they involve doing.

Because they involve doing, but they also involve, they also involve putting yourself out there for yourself or for another, which you said kindness to yourself.

But I think the doing is the biggest thing. We heard a few people up here saying it in different ways, obviously the most recent being Brian. But the doing, you know what's hard about doing, other than the obvious, is it requires more.