‘Sometimes to be kind we have to be cruel, and sometimes it is cruel to be kind.’

That was the only thing I heard from a long, private, and intense conversation between my father and his brother before they said good night to each other. I had unsuccessfully tried to listen in all evening while I halfheartedly did my secondary school homework in the adjacent living room.

My uncle said it, which surprised me.

He was known in our family for being generally quiet. He spoke little. When he chanced upon us kids, it was to tease us with zingers like, Eh Fahri, you have to cut your hair before you go to Singapore, you know? If not Lee Kuan Yew will arrest you at immigration. Although he was pleassant, generous and kind to all of us, from the little I saw of him growing up, I could not shake the impression he imparted of someone aloof, trivial and superficial.

But in that one line, he changed a lifetime of impressions, albeit short. He shattered that staid image I had of him. That line jolted me into awareness that a deep and profound appreciation of life’s complexities lay beneath my uncle’s superficial facade.

He changed how I saw him in one sentence.

It is one of the many incidents that remind me to stay open-minded about others. What we see, even often, is likely only one or merely several dimensions of a person. Many others lie hidden. Hold my view loosely. People are complex creatures.

I never forgot that either because I remember how mind-blowing that insight was at that age. To read it from the eye is one. To hear that conclude a serious conversation is another. I was fascinated not just by the juxtaposition of kindness and cruelty but their relationship to each other. Each is necessary for the other’s existence, and yet seemingly opposed to each other—an opposed binary.

His single statement also led me to think deeply about the interplay of kindness and cruelty, both in my own life and in broader human experiences.

Although cruelty is seen as a negative trait, because it implies the hurting of another, it is not without some benefit. They are just not immediately discernible or realisable. Those who suffer and survive cruelty cultivate resilience and adaptability; it builds survivorship endurance. Cruelty helps us better appreciate what kindness could be. It identifies our threshold for discomfort and pain. It demands we acquire cunning and creativity to avoid it.

The cruelty I speak of can be personal but also includes situational or environmental. Cruelty does not need a directing mind.

Not all important lessons are discoverable from a benign, encouraging and supportive environment, that is our comfort zone. Too much of kindness encourages a lack of urgency, grit and resilience. It fosters a sense of complacency. It leaves us more vulnerable to hurt and pain when it comes.

Valuable lessons are found in our discomfort zone. The catch about the discomfort zone is the longer we stay, the more we learn and valuable our learning, but the more severely we suffer. There will come a time when our suffering exceeds our learning. It is at that point that we need to return to our comfort zone to recuperate, reflect and rejuvenate ourselves. We have to be put back together to appreciate being put together.

A holistic education is drawn from both the comfort and discomfort zone. Lessons learned only from the comfort zone eventually become dull and lacking. Lessons ony from the discomfort zone eventually threatens our wellbeing. That duality of comfort and harshness – cruelty and kindness – is necessary and important for a complete and sustainable education.

That was the reason I felt guilty about my teaching of others – it lacked harshness and cruelty. I always erred on the side of kindness, reasonable and benign. I avoided cruelty or harshness as much as possible. I find it irrational as a general approach.

Mine is to understand the person and the situation they are in instead of presuming intentionality and accusing. We’re all struggling, damaged and trying to keep up. Myself, included. So let’s not be too quick to inflict cruelty until we are certain they are deserving of it.

I felt guilty because I wanted my colleagues and students to learn as much as possible from me. I also wanted to be holistic in my approach to the education of others. If I deprived them of an experience of cruelty and harshness, I was also depriving them of the opportunity to learn important lessons.

That bothered me until it occured to me that my sense of guilt lay in a thinking error. I mistakenly thought I was the only resource for learning and felt the need to address both dimensions of learning. Since I wasn’t, I didn’t have to! I was merely one source of learning from a constellation of other sources. That meant I was free to adopt an approach that suited me. I did not have to carry the responsibility of being harsh or cruel. Others would deliver or inflict the harshness and cruelty.

That irredeemable conflicting duality of cruelty and kindness can only be resolved by the balancing of the two instead of the triumph of either. That paradox of cruelty and kindness – opposed binaries – is a common one. No good without the bad. No light without darkness. No complexity without simplicity. That opposed duality is a natural, inherent and unresolvable human condition.

The paradox we observe reflects the inherent duality of being human and the attendant complexities that arise from that dichotomy. It is not something we can eradicate. In learning to live with this paradox, we must embrace the full spectrum of human experience, acknowledging that growth often requires both the nurturing hand of kindness and the harsh lessons of cruelty.