Gentleness is not weakness. I don’t think we can overstate this or emphasize it enough. And, in fact, we all know it is true, we just haven’t thought about it much. Let’s consider some examples.
Imagine a warehouse manager at Crate and Barrel. She watches a forklift maneuvering a palate with two thousand pounds of boxes of plates and glasses onto a delivery truck. As the forklift lifts the palate into the truck the manager instinctively makes hand motions and says, gently, lay it down gently.
She doesn’t say that because she thinks the forklift is weak. she says it because she knows the forklift is strong enough to drop that shipment with enough force to break everything. Gentleness is not weakness. It is power under control.