Too little
Wish the pleasure spoiled
I hope that flower wilts before they get home.
Disappointment becomes a wish for an unrelated loss to the other person.
Benevolence
Wish others well when their plans cross yours.
A settled wish for the good of others.
Benevolence is a settled wish for other people’s good. Anonymity can make that wish feel optional, especially when a stranger receives something you wanted. You can allow their pleasure to matter alongside your disappointment. The person remains someone whose day you can hope will go well, even when your interests briefly compete.
Benevolence gives strangers a place in your goodwill
The last enormous sunflower at the market goes to the person just ahead of you. It is an excellent sunflower: almost a small weather system. You choose a pot of blue flowers and tell the new sunflower owner that it looks wonderful. They beam from behind it. Your disappointment has not had to become a wish that their flower droop.
Finding the balance in Benevolence
Welcome another buyer’s pleasure after they obtain the flower you had hoped to choose.
A fitting response
Keep goodwill available
That is a lovely choice. I hope it brightens your room.
The other person’s enjoyment remains welcome while you choose something else.
Pursued too far
Require yourself to feel delighted
If I wanted it too, my kindness must be false.
The pursuit of benevolence turns mixed feelings into an unnecessary trial of character.
Goodwill concerns what you wish for the person. It can remain steady without erasing every feeling about what you missed.
What Benevolence makes possible
Goodwill can make shared abundance easier to enjoy, including the parts that go to someone else. You become able to notice another person’s delight without turning it immediately into a comparison of fortunes. This gives brief encounters warmth even when there is no lasting relationship to maintain or advantage to gain.
Benevolence in ordinary life
A popular event
Hope the people who obtained tickets enjoy the evening, while making another plan for yourself.
A new stall
Let a seller’s early success be good news even if their queue is longer than the one you chose.
Visitors with a map
Let a group pause to find their way without making their unfamiliarity an offense. Step around them with goodwill; offer directions if welcome.
Nearby virtues, different work
Generosity
Generosity gives something; Benevolence can remain present when you have nothing to give.
Fairness
Fairness assesses how an opportunity should be shared; Benevolence concerns the goodwill you retain toward the people involved.
Benevolence and its counterfeits
Goodwill for the useful
Wishing people well only when they might repay you counterfeits Benevolence. A stranger’s good can matter on its own.
Compulsory cheerfulness
Denying your disappointment to look benevolent counterfeits Benevolence. Goodwill can coexist with a feeling you would not have chosen.
How to cultivate Benevolence
Allow another person’s good fortune to be good in its own right.
Keep disappointment specific to what you missed.
Offer a sincere acknowledgment when it fits the encounter.
Try it today
When someone receives an ordinary pleasure you also wanted, let your disappointment remain yours while wishing the person enjoyment. No performance is required.
Questions worth returning to
- Can their good remain good while I feel disappointed?
- What do I hope happens to this person after our encounter ends?
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
Sympathy, however, enlivens joy and alleviates grief.
Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Part I, Section I, Chapter II
Smith contrasts the ways we participate in another person’s happiness and sorrow. Goodwill includes the first: the stranger’s delight in a flower can become something to welcome.
After this I began to observe him whenever I boarded his bus, and found a curious pleasure in the constant good-nature of his bearing.
A. G. Gardiner · Many Furrows · On Saying “Please”
The bus conductor has just apologized for stepping on Gardiner’s foot. The incident reveals a settled good nature that Gardiner goes on to enjoy, rather than a single polished gesture.
Instead of any diminution, there is need of a great increase of disinterested exertion to promote the good of others.
John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Chapter IV, Limits to the Authority of Society
Mill answers the charge that personal liberty requires indifference to others. Wishing people well remains important even when their choices belong to them.
Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.
Ralph Waldo Emerson · Essays · Gifts
Emerson distinguishes goodwill from the particular benefit one can provide. Benevolence can remain real when we have little to give beyond a friendly response to someone else’s happiness.
By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers · An Apology for Idlers
Stevenson praises the unplanned good that an agreeable presence can do. In a passing encounter, goodwill may contribute something without creating a debt or a continuing relationship.
As I am a great Lover of Mankind, my Heart naturally overflows with Pleasure at the sight of a prosperous and happy Multitude, insomuch that at many publick Solemnities I cannot forbear expressing my Joy with Tears that have stolen down my Cheeks.
Joseph Addison · The Spectator · No. 69, May 19, 1711
Addison’s Spectator delights in other people’s prosperity at the Royal Exchange. His commercial portrait is idealized, but the pleasure is recognizably directed outward: strangers’ good fortune can be welcome without becoming our possession.
And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.
Charles Dickens · A Christmas Carol · Stave III, Scrooge’s Third Visitor
In the Ghost of Christmas Present’s journey, Dickens carries the holiday’s goodwill even to a ship at sea. The sentence gives benevolence an ordinary expression: a kinder word within the day’s work.
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Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.