We are all born with different personalities. Some of us are skewed more towards "kindness," others, far away from it. Some of us find it natural to survive hard situations; some of us can’t bear even one day of adversity without cursing the day we were born. It is a mix of both worlds, and I guess that’s what makes it beautiful and interesting. However, I have realised that the hardest position to be in is between tough-mindedness and tenderheartedness. Some would call it fortitude, compassionate strength, or moral courage. I prefer using the terms "tough-mindedness" and "tenderheartedness."

In many parts of the world, there is a deeply entrenched belief that men are expected to be purely tough-minded. In such places, it is believed that "tough-mindedness" is what makes men protectors and providers of their societies. Additionally, for men, being soft-minded—fearful, lacking courage, shy, and resigned—is the highest epitome of weakness. A man who is wealthy but falls short of some or all of the above-mentioned attributes is still classified as weak. However, despite all these expectations from men in such societies, the irony is that they are also expected to love their wives, children, and the families they come from with all the tenderness they can muster.

If we are to look at women in such societies, they are expected to be tenderhearted since their primary role (in such societies) is nurturing children and making/maintaining homes. It is a no-brainer that this can only be done with softness. It is of late that we are seeing women, even in patriarchal societies, being encouraged to embrace tough-mindedness. This is exemplified when women accumulate immense power in patriarchal societies (which is not necessarily a bad thing): earning ‘big’ salaries and becoming great leaders.

Dear reader, for easy comprehension of this read, let me tell you a tale: There were two brothers. One became a soldier. The other became a surgeon. The soldier believed toughness meant never hesitating. He charged first. Spoke last. Felt nothing. On the other hand, the surgeon believed kindness meant never causing pain. He comforted. Delayed. Avoided hard decisions. Then one day, war came to their town. The soldier rushed into battle and fought bravely. However, he lost many men because he refused to retreat when retreat was wise. Conversely, the surgeon spent most of his time with wounded children. He wept with them. He hesitated to amputate when amputation would save their lives. Short this tale was! Yes! The main lessons we learn from this tale are that toughness without tenderness ends up becoming cruelty, and tenderness without toughness becomes weakness. A great soldier not only fights well with his physique but also engages his intuition, self-awareness, and emotions. A great surgeon is not only compassionate but also quick-witted or cognitively agile. 

A few weeks ago, I woke up to a mobile money message that notified me that I had received five million Uganda shillings. No sooner had I read the message than a lady called me, confessing that she had accidentally sent the money to my mobile money account. She politely asked me to send it back to her. Dear reader, at that time, I was so low on cash, and therefore, seeing five million Uganda shillings credited to my mobile money account seemed like a big blessing from God. I couldn’t understand why someone would make such a big mistake with a large amount of money. This was a big test of my personality, in particular my character. Here, we are talking about someone who has built mental toughness by consistently working out in the gym and swimming pool for the past four years. Definitely, it is a no-brainer that a person has to be tough-minded.

I found myself thinking not only of how this lady would feel if I refused to return the money—I could easily have withdrawn it and disappeared for months—but also of how I would live with myself for the rest of my life if I kept it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I decided to send all the money back to this lady. When she received all the money back, she sent back fifty thousand Uganda shillings. I guess this was meant to act as a token of appreciation for choosing integrity over opportunity (though I felt it was meagre). I think it was inevitable for her not to notice the moral strength I had exhibited to overcome the quiet temptation to keep what I could so easily have claimed as mine. Dear reader, this was no easy decision! For as long as you’re human, I believe you’d also not have found this situation easy to deal with. 

On telling a few friends about what I had done, many of them confidently labelled me as someone who is "softhearted," hence weak. They went on to tell me that people who act as I did are naïve about how the real world works. Others excused me on the basis that my job hid me away from certain harsh money realities, like ruthless negotiations, and emphasised humanity. Others called me a "nice guy," hence someone who finishes last. At some point, I began to doubt whether what I had done was right. Most interestingly, some of my gym mates—who held me in high regard for being tough-minded—were so surprised I could do such a thing.

It later dawned on me that what I had done was combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove. Despite being able to run away with all the money and not get caught, I chose not to. I guess it was my capacity for empathy and vulnerability—the fragile gift of emotional depth—that largely contributed to my decision to send back all the money, despite the temptation to use it to fill my own lack.

If we are to look at the ancient world, we see that strength was always combined with moral restraint. In other words, they practised what I like to call "being tough-minded but tenderhearted." For example, in the gospel of Matthew (10:16), the instruction is "Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." This is not being weak or soft. It is strategic intelligence paired with moral purity. Unfortunately, today, "tough-minded" often means emotionally unavailable, hyper-independent, and unmoved by suffering. Modern culture has split strength from tenderness, yet ancient wisdom united them. Additionally, the samurai who followed “Bushido” were not only required to have martial skills, loyalty, honour, and compassion but also to be trained in calligraphy, poetry, and the tea ceremony. They were expected to master violence and beauty. You would say, a sword in one hand and a brush in the other. 

Maybe we are to blame the industrial revolution for redefining masculinity as productivity, stoicism, emotional suppression, and the idea of "provide, don’t feel." In that era, factories needed endurance, not emotional intelligence, and so tenderness became associated with weakness. Are we still in the Industrial Revolution era? Yes or no?

On my end, it is through reading books (both fiction and non-fiction), coaching children how to swim, and guiding clients on eating well—since I’m a nutritionist—that I fortunately developed a deep capacity for empathy, vulnerability, and the ability to reconnect with my own “humanity.” When you read books, you get drawn outside your world into another world, and that calls for a change of perspective. It is, therefore, the repeated exposure to the experience of reading books that inevitably builds your capacity to be empathetic and have a raw pulse of human consciousness.

When you coach children how to swim, you tend to endlessly get annoyed when they refuse to listen to your instructions, even after cognitive fatigue from redundant dialogue. However, even though you could crush these annoying children with your strength—that's obviously superior to theirs—you choose not to. Additionally, as a swim coach, besides analysing an athlete’s performance data with a tough mind, you must also coach their spirit with a tender heart by encouraging them and being patient with them. You have to look at your swimming student not as a "swimming machine" but as a human being who has fears and aspirations. On that note, you therefore have to be soft enough to feel their joys and sorrows but also hard enough to critically analyse their performance. This is a subtle thing that requires a delicate balance. You not only have to analyse the 0.5-second lag in their turn with mathematical precision but also understand the body fatigue that causes it. It is such experiences that give you the grace of feeling truly alive. 

As a nutritionist, I tend to deal with clients who keep repeating wrong eating habits even after numerous nutrition counselling sessions with me. This can be terribly annoying, especially if you are made of flesh and blood. However, even though you can exercise the will to stop working with them, the decision you make to keep working with them till they change their eating habits is the ultimate magic—it's the game changer. That is what separates you from “bad/unsuccessful nutritionists," as it deepens your capacity for empathy, vulnerability, and ability to feel the human touch. Also, I realised that I had to have a tender heart that didn’t treat my clients like "revenue units" if I wanted to be successful at my job. I had to transcend the idea of just focusing on making money to making an impact on people, regardless of whether money comes or not. To a large extent (despite being in a capitalist environment), I had to look at my job as a mission I was assigned to by God to accomplish here on earth. On deep reflection, I think if I decided to be tough-minded and hard-hearted, I would get the monetary results I sought but end up leaving a trail of broken people, hence isolated success with broken relationships. I would win, but at what cost? What would such a life be like?

In a word, despite all the benefits of being tender-hearted, you have to be cautious about being able to strike a good balance. You don’t want to have a combination of soft-mindedness and tender-heartedness (this is the worst you can be), lest you become a victim of manipulation. People who are both soft-minded and tender-hearted are easily manipulated and always lack the discernment to build something lasting, as they get distracted by lots of forces. If you want to strike a great balance between tender-heartedness and tough-mindedness, besides coaching and mentoring or reading books, you can engage in analytical writing relative to creative expression, martial arts or self-defence classes, high-precision gardening or aquascaping, narrative photography, playing musical instruments, and many other activities. The world teaches men to choose between steel and silk. But the highest form of strength is neither: it is steel wrapped in velvet.