Let’s talk about the benefits of kindness. We depend on the acts of kindness from others for our survival. From the time we were born and then again at the end of our life we are decidedly in need of others caring for us. Kindness is among the principled things that make life meaningful and bring joy and happiness to both the provider and the recipient.
Kindness creates in us a feeling of belonging, warmth, and openness that allows us to communicate to others. All parties involved get the feeling of friendship and trust. We can get rid of our feelings of doubt and insecurity while we can relate to others more easily. The benefits of kindness mean a more peaceful world, and happier life, and a life of meaning.
When practicing kindness for others, it is done with other virtues at the core, including honesty, forgiveness, trust, mindfulness, empathy, patience, respect, loyalty, gratitude and service. When others extend kindness to us, we see these same virtues in them, and soon we realize that we have all of these virtues in us already and it is a matter of digging them out, acknowledging them and educating ourselves in the best ways to use them.
The opposite is true when there is a lack of kindness, even mean-spiritedness. Individually we may not show kindness in some ways, sometimes inadvertently. When that happens, our conscience cries out to us to develop a virtue that we have already mentioned. We may have been responding to a selfish act toward us, or it might be shown as a result of fear, anger or frustration.
However, when we slow down and consider what we want to be known for, we can choose kindess. Our survival both as an individual and as a human race depends on acts of kindness practiced by humans. Kind teachers help students learn; kind parents reinforce their unconditional love for their children, individuals willing to feed the hungry, care for stray animals, play music for the elderly, cleaning a park, sweeping the floor, reading a story to a child, smiling at a stranger.
None of these can be done out of guilt or compulsion though. Kind acts come from our very best selves doing what we can do and become who we are – Kind individuals. So don’t let the problems in the world, the billions of people suffering from hunger or injustice overwhelm us from cultivating kindness in our world. A kind society begins with us as one individual showing kindness to one other individual. This is our starting point. Think Kindness!