Sweet vs. saccharine.

A sweet, gentle and caring interlocutor was recently touting to me the virtues of sweetness, gentleness and caring. "What do you think of that?" they asked. "Pretty cheesy, eh?"

No, actually, I don't think that's cheesy at all. You're (I said to them) very specific, for one thing -- sweetness and gentleness and caring are very specific qualities -- and "cheesiness" is almost always recognizable for its vagueness. Secondly, "cheesiness" means, supposedly, saccharine and sentimental -- in the pejorative sense -- and there's nothing saccharine about being sweet, gentle or caring.

But caring, I think, is the absolute Good among the three -- something everyone should want to aspire to be, if they're paying attention. Who would WANT to be careless? Of course that doesn't mean that a lot of people aren't perfectly willing to stick their heads in the sand and be extremely careless when it suits them ...

Sweetness and gentleness are more situational. There are situations in which it's appropriate to be gentle and sweet, and situations in which it's not appropriate. That doesn't mean that malice is ever called for, but roughness, stridency, bluntness, ferocity? You bet. I strive to be sweet and gentle when it's appropriate, and strive to be strident and forceful when that's what's called for. Teaching's a great model, since it requires you to reach so many -- and so very different -- people in order to do positive good, i.e. enlighten them, sensitize them, reach their hearts and minds. Hearts so often cold and minds closed. Sweetness in the classroom is crucial, no question, but also unquestionably insufficient on its own: sometimes you have to put holy terror into them to wake them from their apathetic stupor. Writing's the same way: to reach and move the reader requires carrots and sticks. But natch: life, thus truth, is such: a mixed bag, sweetness and sorrow. Imagine The Tempest with no Caliban; imagine a piano with no black keys. Life is light and dark in equal parts; ergo truth, life's reflection, must be so.

But Caring (or something like it) must be the constant; there has to be a higher purpose (e.g. enlightenment) behind both gentle and rough gestures. If there's not, we all know what that looks like: sweetness for its own sake is no different from bitterness for its own sake: groundless gestures made for purely aesthetic, self-satisfying reasons. The cheesy Hallmark card and the morbid Goth pose are flip sides of the same worthless counterfeit coin.