I’ve been thinking about kindness and compassion, and how it
is possible to see them in the faces of other people. It strikes me when I look
at photos or live footage of powerful political figures, celebrities and the
like, that there is a hardness in some of the faces that is indicative of their
true characters. There is also something about the eyes that gives their true
natures away. Who was it said—‘the eyes are the window to the soul’. If they
are, then I’ve seen some pretty hard and merciless souls in my life. I’ve also
had the misfortune of having crossed paths with a few psychopaths, and their
eyes are often black and soulless—empty and actually rather frightening. So
their empty eyes are the windows to their lack of souls. Luckily, the bulk of
my experience with other people has shown me that kindness and compassion are
still in abundance. Why is it such that we often let one bad apple spoil the bunch? We must
try to guard against that happening, because if we let that happen, the wrong
people win. One bad apple out of ten means that ninety percent are still good.
Those are good numbers.
There is likely no hard scientific evidence to back up my
observations about what I see in the faces of others. Nonetheless, I cannot help but look at the faces of Trump and Putin and
observe hardness there. They look rigid, angry, formidable, and mean. They
don’t look happy nor do they look relaxed. They look like plagued souls, and perhaps that is the reason for their
bullying natures toward others. The current Pope is a contrast to them both.
His face looks relaxed, not rigid, and he has kind eyes. My reaction to a photo
of the current pope is visceral; I instinctively know that I could trust him to
be kind. I could not say that about Trump or Putin or men like them.
I gravitate toward kind and compassionate people and tend to
remove myself from the presence of hard, rigid and mean people if I can, including psychopaths. Not
all people are so lucky. I can remove myself by choice, whereas others are
perhaps trapped by virtue of the fact that they live in a dictator-led country,
or in an abusive relationship, or that they work at a job they need and cannot
leave.
I do not like hard, rigid, formidable and mean people, whether
they are men or women. I do not like power- and control-hungry people, nor do I
like boorish, loud, or narcissistic individuals. I am not interested in getting
to know others if their behavior involves humiliating others, making them feel
worthless, or actively trying to destroy them. I instinctively shy away from
these types of people because I know they are no good for me. That is how my
mother would have phrased it. She would not have been overly-judgmental; she
would merely have said ‘be careful’ or ‘don’t cast your pearls before swine’.
In other words, don’t waste your time on them. It’s a good way to live if one
can manage it.
