I am gentle with myself and others.

Watch how a room changes when somebody in it has a migraine. Voices drop, the big light goes off, nobody announces any of it. Gentleness turns out to be something people are already fluent in.

The strange part is how rarely it gets aimed inward. The same person who would never say *you're pathetic* to a friend having a bad week says it to themselves on the stairs, in passing, as a kind of throat-clearing.

Gentleness isn't going easy. It is accuracy. Most harsh accounts of yourself are simply wrong about the facts, and a fair one lands closer and hurts less.