Kindness is powerful

Some people want to get very rich. Some people want to feel very important, not necessarily to the people who should matter most to them (friends and family) but to the wider world.

Everyone who has ever had a job working for someone else has a better than even chance of having worked for someone like that. You know it when you see it. They have a way of stealing your best ideas or work. They find it necessary to diminish their colleagues, their peers, their staff, their suppliers, their customers and amazingly enough, their friends and families.

It's almost like the only way to be happy or feel better is in direct comparison with how others feel. To the poor souls I'm referring to, they have to take others down because it's the only route they see to feeling better.

Now, the fact that it doesn't work is immaterial. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem better look like a nail.

OK, so why am I talking about this? Because I've experienced being treated poorly myself on numerous occassions and I have plenty of coping mechanisms. I'm tall, which despite anything you may have heard to the contrary is a big bonus. I'm well read, educated and will always be eternally grateful to my Dad for gifting me a sense of humour and a sense of the preposterous and yet I am still susceptible to the slings and arrows of the thoughtless or malign.

So this isn't really about me. I have a lovely life, a wife I'm pretty damned sure I don't deserve and great kids. We've just been away for the weekend making merry with a couple of my brothers and their families in rural Marlborough so I know I'm surrounded with love and people that care about me and I hope they know that I feel the same.

So, to the point. I have a darker, more maudlin side to my nature. I got that from Dad too. We both refer to it as The Black Dog, as Winston Churchill did. Actually, neither Dad nor Winston say it anymore, on account of them both being quite dead now.

Often where it gets me is when I see people who have none of the privileges I do. I see the dangerous looking crazies with squeegie bottles at intersections silently intimidating women alone in their cars to pay them to wash their windscreens and I want to rush to the simple conclusion that they are just scum who the Police should deal with. But then I can't avoid thinking a little further than that. I can't help but look at these characters, as often as not with faces covered in badly drawn tattoos hanging around intersections.

The inconvenient question that keeps percolating up and I make no apology for those it may trigger is this. What life experience has led to this being where these people are? No-one who has led a gentle, nurtured life would choose this as a lifestyle.

More and more often I see people sleeping on the streets with some kind of hat or tin out in the hope of begging some money. Invariably I give them money but that is no kind of answer. I defy anyone to tell me that sleeping on the street in the freezing cold and suffering the indignity of begging is a "lifestyle choice".

Families crammed into filthy, disgusting and often chaotic motel complexes didn't wake up one day and decide that would be a cool way to track through life.

Tiny broken children that have been abused, totured and murdered before they even start school didn't ask for that and the adults that did it to them weren't born killers.

Pointless, painful and shit lives are not lifestyle choices. People learn from tiny just how brutish life can be and they learn it from people who had the same experiences. It is inter-generational pain and it isn't going to be cured by holding our noses, looking away and demanding that "the authorities must do somewthing about this".

I attended an Auckland Chamber of Commerce Ba5 recently. It was at the Orams Marine Captain's Lounge. Very swanky and to get to the lounge one must walk through a cavernous shed where many tens of millions of dollars of pleasure boats are stored.

At the meeting Wayne Brown was the guest speaker and was giving it full Wayne Brown, taking a poke at the homeless and bewildered "cluttering up the city" and taking a casual flick at the lunches in schools issue. I was standing next to two women who felt slightly out of place and I could almost feel the steam coming out of their ears. We walked out together and they were righteously indignant about the flippant way Brown was talking about "their people". These marvellous women work at The Auckland City Mission. Now that is what heroes look like.

Again, homelessness and health issues - mental and physical are very seldom choices. I've got a story here. My very best friend from high school who would likely have gone on to be a very fine architect began to get a bit perculiar at 17 and by 18 he was wandering the streets, often naked believing he was Jesus. The fact is that he was schizophrenic and for many years resisted the diagnosis and the medication. That was 46 years ago and my old mate has slept under bridges and on beaches and under buildings for most of that time. A choice? You could say so, but a choice driven by the fact that he can't stand being around people for too long. It's too much for him.

My old mate comes and stays with us for a couple of days every six months or so. He has a good scrub up in the bath, washes his belongings, gets a few decent meals in him and then he's off again. There's a few of us out there that do our bit for him. Along with the warmth of the bath and the food comes the warmth of being loved and knowing you are wanted somewhere.

This is a very long winded way of talking about behaviour in business. I read the LinkedIn articles by people who describe themselves in the most outlandish ways, skiting about how they work 28 hours a day and 8 days a week and I just think first that there is a bit of a maths problem going on here and what the hell happened to this person that they need to be so pompous and ridiculous.

I read articles from people who think you haven't been an alpha boss if you haven't fired a certain number of people in a certain amount of time. Most of these people tend to be men and my flippant takeaway is possibly a small appendage problem.

Let me tell you what gets me every time and moves me to tears. When I read about someone who is in a position of influence and uses that power to make a difference for someone else less fortunate and expects nothing in return. That floors me and inspires me to be just like that.

I'm so lucky to have had a career where I've been able to look after, nurture and provide opportunities for quite a few people. It makes me feel bigger than myself. Not bigger as in having a big head and full of my own bullship, but bigger as a person. There is no feeling quite like lending a hand, just because you want to and even better because it's the right thing to do.

The world for many people is a terrifying place and the options are severely limited. Being one paycheck away from poverty must be soul-destroying, especially for parents.

My very simple request is going out to anyone in business and life that has real agency. You know who you are and you know what resources you have available to use at your discretion. Simple request. Think of something you can do that would make a positive difference for someone who doesn't have what you do.

Show some kindness, be generous. It might be with money but it doesn't need to be. The gift of time and being willing to share what you know and have learned through your life can be life-changing to someone else.

Being mean, selfish, cruel and harsh diminishes us in every way. I know it's popular in many business circles but those are circles I want nothing to do with. I want to work and live and play with people who are up to something bigger than just their own little world. I want to make this world a little better every day and I'll die trying.

As a godless heathen I don't even have the benefit of having Christ on my side. I don't need it. I had something even better. A Mum and a Dad who brought my three brothers and me up to take our community responsibilities seriously and I'm here to tell you, it's bloody good for the soul.

That's it. Do something nice. What's the worst that could happen?