A few weeks ago, I wrote about persistent gentleness and mentioned I had that confused with another two words. I then found the sticky note I had written with the short phrase that started me pondering, which was gentle relentlessness.
Sometimes, being relentless is seen as harsh or a bad thing, like maybe describing a salesperson who won’t give up or when a child starts asking “why” to questions we find difficult to answer, like why is the sky blue, which leaves every parent feeling exhausted. We might say they are “so relentless.”
Yet when you add the word gentle, it changes things. It could look like the difference between someone who goes after their goal and doesn’t care who they run over or hurt to get there, versus pursuing it showing kindness and gratitude along the way. The latter may be seen as being soft or weak.
The key word in both the persistent gentleness and gentle relentlessness phrases is, of course, gentle. The definition of the word, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “free from harshness, sternness or violence.” Who doesn’t want that? In a world where there is so much vitriol and hatred, often against those who are deemed “other,” being gentle is not seen or heard about often enough.
I will share two quotes I came across about being gentle. The first is from Neuroscientist Abhijit Naskar, “Be a gentle giant like the elephant, not an opportunistic carnivore like the wolf. The elephant doesn’t harm anyone to prove its greatness, while the wolf doesn’t think twice to devour another wolf.”
And from book Lost December by Richard Paul Evans, “Sometimes it’s not the strength but gentleness that cracks the hardest shells.”
My hope is we can pause and think and space opens up for us all to pay attention, asking ourselves how can we display more gentleness, and when we do, can we bring that forth from others?
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