My philosophy on life

Assume people mean well, and be kind to whoever you meet. It costs so little and can mean so much.

If I had to fit the whole thing on one page, it’s this — in my own words:

Min filosofi på livet e å alltid gå ut i fra at folk vil vel, og bare ver snille mot de eg møte på min vei. Av og til blir ein skuffa, men eg tenke uansett at det aldri e feil å ver snille. Det koste så lite, men kan bety så sykt mye.

My philosophy on life is to always assume that people mean well, and to just be kind to everyone I meet along my way. Sometimes you get let down — but the way I see it, it’s never wrong to be kind. It costs so little, and can mean so incredibly much.

Two things I hold onto

Assume good faith first. Most people, most of the time, mean well. Start there. You’ll be wrong sometimes and get disappointed — but assuming the worst of everyone to avoid the occasional letdown is a bad trade. The cost of being open is small; the cost of being closed is a smaller life.

Kindness is almost free, and rarely wasted. A patient reply, the benefit of the doubt, two extra minutes for someone. It barely costs you anything — and to the person on the other end it can land far bigger than you’ll ever know. That asymmetry is the whole reason to default to kind.

It’s also how I try to build things: tools that respect the person using them instead of extracting from them. Kindness at the level of software.