Wisdom Of Kindness

“Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makararating sa paroroonan.”
— Jose Rizal

Because its almost Philippine Independence day, I thought I’d share a quote by Jose Rizal. In english the quote is translated as “He who does not look back to where he came from will never reach his destination.” His whole life’s work was about making Filipinos aware of their identity, history and dignity. People who don’t know their history can be controlled and manipulated more easily.

This quote feels especially relevant today, with so much misinformation online trying to rewrite history, turn good people into villains, and praise those who caused harm.I could write an entire post about that, but that’s not really what this is about. On a personal level this quote means that you can’t really know where you’re going (you’re lost) if you don’t understand your past or the lessons from your past. That’s why reflection is important, you can’t grow as a person without learning from your past.

Since this year started, I’ve had this recurring thought about the connection between intelligence and kindness but it gets complicated the deeper I look at it. Intelligence doesn’t guarantee kindness and kindness doesn’t require intelligence. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s some kind of connection between them.

Its not easy to be kind. We’re all carrying something. Stress, frustrations, disappointments, grief, worries and the like. I think there’s something wise about being able to separate your own suffering from how you treat others and choosing not to pass the hurt along. When you start considering perspectives beyond your own, you also start thinking about consequences. You begin to question actions that might hurt others. You see how much of a person’s story is hidden from view. And once you see that complexity, cruelty becomes harder to justify. Maybe intelligence isn’t the word I’ve been looking for all this time. Maybe what I mean is wisdom.

I used to think wisdom naturally came with age. Now I’m not so sure because as I get older I start to notice that just because someone has lived longer doesn’t mean they’ve learned from life. They may repeat the same patterns for years, avoid self-reflection and blame everyone except themselves. They age physically, but their mindset stays stuck. Maturity is about how willing you are to take responsibility, to reflect, to regulate your emotions, and to see beyond your own ego. A lot of people never get there.

Wisdom isn’t just about age, or knowledge. It’s the willingness to examine your own beliefs, question your assumptions, and remain open to the possibility that you might be wrong. Its the kind of intelligence that understands life, the one that sees nuance, consequences, emotions, and systems.

Once you truly understand how complicated people are. How much of their lives you can’t see, how many battles they’re carrying, it becomes harder to reduce them to something simple. Harder to judge them too quickly. Harder to hurt them without thinking and that starts to look like kindness.

In the end, maybe the real measure of a “grown” mind isn’t how much it knows…but how it understands. It isn’t the one that is most certain. It’s the one that can stay soft without becoming naive. The one that can disagree without dehumanizing and the one that can hold boundaries without losing empathy.