Try a little tenderness

I quite liked this article by Gordon Marino in The Stone, over at the New York Times Opinionator, on the neglected emotion of tenderness:

While I have all the respect in the world for respect, it is a chilly sort of feeling — if it is a feeling at all. Respect is a fence that prevents us from harming one another. But strengthening the ties that bind and make us human requires something more pliant, more intimate. We need to be visited by that weird and neglected angel that is the feeling of tenderness.