Italian psychologist and author of The Power of Kindness, Piero Ferruci warns against the dangers of “global cooling”. As the pace of our lives increases and there’s more and more technology around us, our communication tends become less and less personal. The drive for efficiency and profit overrides the heart. Warmth and genuine presence fade.
That is why Ferruci argues that we need to practice more kindness. For others but ultimately for ourselves. “It’s all really very simple. You don’t have to choose between being kind to yourself and others. It’s one and the same”, he says. Each person is the whole world, as ancient mystics have pointed out. “Being kind is taking stand”, Ferruci says, “Maybe our kindness will be ineffective. The money we send to alleviate hunger might be unwisely used. Helping an old lady across the road does not eliminate poverty in a faraway country. And for every plastic bottle we pick up on the beach, another ten will be tossed down tomorrow. Never mind. We have affirmed a principle, a way of being.”
Ferruci suggests two tools for practicing kindness: empathy and attention. People who are suffering have a hard time making good use of advice, diagnoses, interpretations and interventions, but everyone needs empathy. Once we have the feeling that someone is putting themselves in our shoes, Ferruci believes, we may be able to let go of suffering and move toward healing.
“We may think that mental illnesses are born out of pain and traumas,” says psychosynthesis practitioner Piero Ferruci. “But the real sickness is that we deny the most beautiful part of ourselves. We deny our creativity, our joy, our kindness. That’s why we suffer. We not only suppress violence and sex—as Freud said—but more to the point we suppress love and inner beauty because that’s much scarier.”
So we are afraid of our own beauty, of our light—as Nelson Mandela once put it so beautifully. And that’s why we keep ourselves small and dependent.
Still, Ferucci believes, there is hope. “Have you ever wondered why the world still hasn’t fallen apart?” The answer, he believes, is kindness. “Mail carriers, train conductors, newspaper vendors, cleaners… of course they earn their livelihood with what they do, but it all happens largely thanks to their goodwill, to their kindness.”