This piece was written by the author for a contest run by Sailing Leaf in January, 2018.

“When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind.”

                                                                                         ― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

This quote was famously expressed by R.J.Palacio in her book Wonder. It was a New York Times bestseller, received 4.4 ratings on Goodreads. This heart-warming book about a boy with facial disfiguration entering middle school, and dealing with bullying caused by his appearance appealed for an emotional read. So how can this famous book, and perhaps its most famous quote be disproved by a mere 12-year old girl? Some would say it is daring and cheeky of a young girl to question an age-old belief, with deep-rooted values and meaning. But considering the number of young miracles today, like the girl Rajgauri Pawarv who had a higher IQ than Albert Einstien and Stephen Hawking, perhaps you should hear me out.

Kindness is a unique quality. Being generous and considering the choices of others before anything is selfless. It is a blissful act that encourages the growth of oxytocin, which is great. So, kindness has been proved right even by science that is truly based on logical and rational conclusions.

However, this advice when applied to real life, may complicate matters. Society, as it is right now, is not perfect. It is not stable. Faced with gender equality, world peace, Donald Trump… our society is not in the best shape. Applying this ‘solution’ may just complicate matters further.

I am not the Big Bad Wolf telling Little Red Riding Hood to be rude to her grandmother. In that scenario, giving the cookies to an old lady was the right thing. Kindness is honourable and noble. It implies selflessness. Sometimes, kindness requires courage. And not the kind of courage that makes you wield a sword and fight, but the other kind of courage that reflects how you consider the other person a human being.

However, think of a scenario in which kindness was favoured over doing the right thing in everyday solutions. The world would be in a great ruckus.

Society is fragile, and social rules demand a certain behavioural mode of conduct which everyone strives to follow. The real world is but rainbows and unicorns and dancing. In the real world, we must toughen up. Kindness is all it is worth, but righteousness can go a long way.

Being kind blindly and being generous unconditionally, unlike popular morals, do not suit to the real world. In this society, you have no idea what you might encounter, and sometimes only kindness will get you nowhere.

Now, once you are aware of the limits your kindness should stretch, within this enclosure, should you choose being kind over being right? Should you risk doing the wrong thing which is kind, but is not right? These are difficult decisions. Emotions should not cloud judgement, over doing the right or wrong thing. Kindness does not come labelled in boxes as good or bad. Doing something kind which is nevertheless wrong, is not acceptable.

Think of it this way - you are trapped in a war-torn landscape. An enemy soldier wanders into your premises, injured and tired. You know this soldier is from the side that bombed you and invaded your homeland, but following the philosophy mentioned before, you may not do the right thing. You might be helpful, and give him shelter, and protect him, and blindly trust him.

Unconditional kindness in this case, is not so helpful. This does not mean it is right to torture this soldier, but it is also not right to betray your homeland and help him, by being overly kind to him. In any case, a common ground has to be found. The line where being kind and being right meet.

My opinion is that being kind and being right go hand in hand. Imagine there is a subconscious scale we have, marked 1 to 100. The highest indicates something which is right, but too cruel or inhuman, and the lowest indicates something which is blindly kind, too generous, too sweet, but too irrational. And then there is the number 50, midway, where lies the area where you are kind but also right. Not cruel or inhuman, but not stupid and being generous unconditionally.

Citing the example of Little Red Riding Hood from earlier, she was being kind. She was delivering cookies to her old grandmother. The inhuman thing would be to ignore the grandmother, and not help the poor lady. There is no unconditional kindness scale in this scenario, meaning the part of the scale marked 1, because kindness is the right approach. There is no third choice.

Of course, the number of choices matter on you and your judgement. Your judgement should be wise. The way the soldier is treated, that common ground should be based on your judgement. That can only be determined by you. However, when you do find that common ground, adhere to it. Kindness is important, but equally important is doing the right thing - proceeding with caution, or being rational.

Returning to my comments about society, common ground, i.e. my 50-scale concept can be applied to a plethora of things. For instance, take gender equality. The totally cruel and inhumane option would be to snatch away all women’s rights or not enforce them, being overly kind would be to grant more rights to them than men, and the common ground is equal rights and their enforcement along with equal pay.

In fact, this approach can also be applied to my life. In the classroom, for instance, if someone asks for my notes, the extreme cruel end would be not to help at all, something too kind would be to give away all my notes and miss out on my own studying, and the third choice would be to send out the pictures via text, or to ask them to copy the notes in school.

With my entire ideology explained, here’s how I would rephrase the quote-

“When given the choice between being right and being kind, choose both.”

While it does make the quote more confusing, it might just make the meaning a bit more interesting and practical too!

Riti Aggarwal, Grade 7, Scottish High International School, Gurgaon