For 20 years, I have been trying to define the DNA of performance and have written extensively about curiosity, empathy and grit as organisational and personal superpowers.

For all my research, I had not thought about how these three qualities overlap with ‘Kindness’ or more so, how empathy, curiosity and grit empower kindness, and in turn, how these three qualities can heal and enable our planet to flourish.

This became apparent In February, this year, when I was asked to contribute to the article, ‘Is Kindness A Lost Art?’ for Storm Singapore – https://storm-asia.com/kindness-usaid-aid/ 

Writing the article left me feeling vulnerable as we all witnessed the heartbreaking events in Israel, the Ukraine and in the USA.

A few months on and I now feel that not just kindness, but our very survival depends on our capacity for curiosity, empathy and grit. More than superpowers, these qualities now seem like evolutionary imperatives; that we won’t make it without these very human qualities.

More and more, I feel the voices of our artists are critical, to shine a light on the nonsense going on around us and to provide some normality, some objective perspective. This is why, last week’s post by President Trump against Bruce Springsteen is truly breathtaking.

Revisiting the music of my dear friend, Raf Rouco, his lyrics hold a mirror up, give us pause and, allow us to more clearly see the mess we are in:
“The slow parade of dwindling days
Where’s the new wine, dying on the vine, a minute at a time
The slow decay of hope for brighter days
Waiting for the wars, and the closing of the doors
The curtain’s drawn on Eden’s final resting place”
(From: ‘Feeling Lucky’)

As I write in the Kindness article: The antecedents of this moment were unleashed in the early 1980s, when kindness and empathy were replaced by a competitiveness and individualism which has been accelerating ever since … In this world, there is simply no place for kindness. Or more eloquently, Rouco sings of our dilemma:
“You’ve found the magic touch
But you want it far too much
You’ve reached your childhood’s end
But you’ll go no further friends
It’s time to leave the stage and make way for boundless oblivion”
(from: ‘Light from this Dimension’)

Wishing us all a little more peace and kindness