I ran into a quote this week that struck a chord in me. I did some research to find out who said it first but it is unclear so I’m just going to attribute it to anonymous. Here it is:“Say what you mean, but don’t say it mean.”I love it because it underscores how honesty and kindness are inseparable. Honesty without kindness is cruelty; kindness without honesty is manipulation. Either without the other solves nothing, and only leads to more trouble.“Say what you mean, but don’t say it mean.”I wish this quote would go viral and become an anthem for our moment in history. I truly do. I think there is perhaps nothing more important. We live in a time of rapid, often dizzying acceleration. There’s no changing that. We live in a time of competing perspectives and opinions. There’s no changing that either. We’re changing, culture is changing, economies are changing, the climate itself is changing. It’s all stressful and it’s tempting to attribute and attach our increasing fears and anxieties to these changes. But I’m not sure that’s actually where they’re coming from.When I take stock of all there is to fear, all that burdens and depresses me, I realize I’m not so concerned about the challenges we face as I am the way we face our challenges.Have we forgotten tact? Is it too late for civility? Have we lost the art of disagreeing agreeably? Can we voice our truth without talking over others? At first this all sounds very, I don’t know, sweetly preachy grade school moralizing. But it really goes much deeper. Here’s why …The problems we face are simply too large and too complex for any one of us to solve on our own. They are too big and we are too small. That’s the honest truth. Which means we need to do this together. Really together. Actually together. So the question of honesty with kindness speaks to whether or not we can treat one another with the kind of even basic respect that will allow us to cooperate to solve big problems. The alternative is to fail to meet the challenges at hand and allow our culture to continue to devolve into the ever increasing violence of tribalism.It can all be so different, these times we live in. You see it every time there’s a natural disaster. People pulling others from the water, from the wreckage, from the rubble. Blankets being wrapped around shivering shoulders. First aid, food and shelter being offered to strangers. No one being called idiot or moron. No litmus test for assistance. No time for blame. Only kindness and helping hands in the face of problems so big that banding together is the only option for survival.So I’ll just say it … Banding together is the only option for survival.And how does it begin?“Say what you mean, but don’t say it mean.”It’s really not so much the challenges we face. It’s the way we face our challenges. I hope very soon we all begin to choose honesty AND kindness. It’s what makes surviving worth it. And, it’s the most tangible way we can all begin to build ourselves a beautiful life.