Four things, and why none of them works on its own

Today, something a bit more foundational than usual.

Here is the thing I keep coming back to. There are four words I try to live by: courageous, wise, kind, funny. And the longer I sit with them, the more I notice that none of them really works on its own.

Courage without wisdom is just careless. It is the bloke who is brave about all the wrong things.

Wisdom without kindness leaves you isolated. You can be right and alone in the same breath.

Kindness without courage gets taken advantage of. You give and give and never say the hard thing, and people learn that they can take advantage.

And funny? The best kind of funny needs the other three. Funny with no kindness or wisdom underneath it is just someone being a bit much.

So they are not four separate things to get good at. They are four things that hold each other up. Pull one out and the rest start to wobble.

What ties them together is one phrase that keeps surfacing: what matters. Wisdom is knowing what matters. Courage is protecting it. Kindness is how you treat people while you do it, especially when nobody is looking. And funny is not taking yourself so seriously that you forget the other three.

One thing to try this week. Pick the one of the four you lean on most. Mine is probably wisdom. I like to think things through. Now find the one you quietly let slide because of it. Mine is kindness, the plain warm sort. I catch it most at work, where I go straight to the task and forget to ask the person how they actually are first. Nothing dramatic. Just the warmth getting skipped because I am busy being useful. That is my wobble. Find yours.

I’m working on kindness, let me know how you get on and I’ll do the same.

That is it. Fold it up, put it in your back pocket, see if it is any use on a warm Wednesday.