Civility Is Wellness

Plus The Bug Infecting All Of Us 🦠

photo by Unknown Reuters photographer of a 2014 Ukrainian Parliament brawl

Hi there,

I wrote this newsletter a few weeks ago, but I’m adding this note today in light of the latest news. I didn’t agree with Charlie Kirk’s views, but as we remember 9/11 and witness yet another school shooting, it’s shocking to see people celebrating what happened to him as if there’s such a thing as acceptable violence. There isn’t. Violence is violence, no matter your politics, and it’s never victimless.

In the spirit of peace, I dedicate this newsletter to the victims of school shootings, including those killed and injured yesterday at Evergreen High School in Denver. We are all affected by this. We must fight for stronger gun control and more rigorous screenings.

If you feel moved, please join me in donating to Moms Demand Action, a grassroots movement of Americans fighting for public safety measures that can protect people from gun violence.

Civility: The Radical Act of Being Human

Something strange happened to me in Japan this summer. It wasn’t the vacation glow, or the thrill of being in a new country. My body relaxed in a way I didn’t know it needed. My shoulders dropped, my jaw unclenched, my guard lowered.

And after pondering about it and checking in with my husband, who felt the same way, I now know what happened: when interacting with people during my trip, they showed trust, they assumed good intent, and grace was extended to me, every single day.

When I messed up (which was often), they didn’t yell — they helped. When I asked for directions, they didn’t just point — they walked me there. I felt relaxed and safe because I wasn’t met with aggression or hostility. It’s not that people didn’t feel anger or didn’t judge me — who knows, maybe I annoyed them endlessly. But that wasn’t reason enough to be uncivil to me. They were kind and thoughtful nonetheless, and experiencing that kind of peace was life changing.

But that also made me painfully aware of how much aggressive energy we normalize here. The best way I can explain how I felt when I came back is this: Imagine living life not realizing you have a splinter in your foot, finally pulling it out and feeling a relief you didn’t know you needed — only to have to shove it back in again. Ouch.

The Bug We Don’t Talk About 🦠

Christine Porath begins her TED Talk with a question: “Who do you want to be?” Not your title, not your salary, but who as a human being.

Turns out, so many of us have experienced a horrible boss, an abusive “friend”, or a bully co-worker who use words to demean, ridicule or humiliate everyone around them. How many times have you been on a receiving end of someone shouting louder just to win? And the worst part is that it never ends there.

Christine calls incivility a bug, a virus, and I couldn’t agree more. One rude boss infects an entire office. One insult can derail a team so badly it literally costs a life. She tells the story of a medical team so rattled by a doctor’s tirade that they botched a dosage. The patient died.

Let this sink in.

Incivility isn’t just rude or annoying. It can be lethal.

And the contagion spreads. Her research shows that even witnessing rudeness corrodes motivation and focus. That reading rude words on a screen makes us five times more likely to miss obvious information (which explains Twitter, and why I never got in it!).

This is how hostility eats us alive: drip by drip, insult by insult, eye-roll by eye-roll.

Experiencing Civility

Here’s the thing: civility is not weakness. It’s not just going high when they go low. It’s fighting back, disagreeing, arguing, getting angry, giving brutal feedback, all without shredding someone’s dignity.

What I experienced in Japan wasn’t just politeness. It was a collective understanding that venting, “telling it like it is,” or publicly airing every petty grievance is less important than keeping everyone’s dignity intact. That building a peaceful (albeit not perfect) society requires looking outside yourself, making sacrifices, and anticipating someone else’s needs instead of solely focusing on your own. Civility requires us to be thoughtful and care about others as we care for ourselves.

Maybe that’s why a cab driver got out to walk me to the right door: pointing isn’t as helpful.
Or why a barista charged my forgotten phone: he knew I’d want it working when I returned.
It’s probably why, when we were in the wrong train car, the clerk apologizes on behalf of the transportation company: not because we were wronged, but because by taking responsibility for their own part of the problem, they didn’t come off as accusatory of our mistakes. And that, in turn, made us want to apologize to them. Problem was solved, dignity was intact, peace was maintained.

This peace in knowing my comfort and wellbeing mattered to strangers who’d never see me again made me want to go out of my way to do the same for others. And isn’t that the idea?

These tiny gestures and minuscule moments help rebuild what constant hostility erodes: trust in one another. Maybe if we trust in humanity and each other’s integrity, we will rise to meet it.

So Who Do You Want to Be?

The truth is both incivility and civility are contagious. One corrodes, and the other uplifts.

So the question is the same one Christine asked on that TED stage: Who do you want to be?

Hostility is killing us. And maybe civility is the only thing left that can save us.

Sending love and peace,

Patricia

PS: I know. Japan is far from perfect. They are on the other side of the spectrum, and that also causes disfunction, poor mental health and stress. But we can learn from them and apply some of what works for them in our own world, and strive for less aggression, and more civility.