Kindness is the quality or state of being kind. One definition of kind is having the will to do good and to bring happiness to others. It currently seems that the standard is to bring happiness to self. If someone else in turn becomes happy by something we do, so be it, but it appears for the most part many people don’t worry if others are affected or not by the choices we make.
Many children have witnessed their parents doing practically whatever to make themselves feel good, which some equate with happiness. These children grow up and become adults who seek out the same pleasures to gratify self and never really seem concerned about others either.
With past and recent tragedies of violence people began seeking out who or what to blame. Each person has the ultimate choice of what they decide to do and they have to always be held accountable for the choices they make. It does need to be realized that our choices can be and are influenced our environment, which include our family, friends, enemies, economy, etc. If this is so, then the one to blame is anyone who breaths.
Dr. James Dobson once wrote, “Take a deep breath of air and then blow it out. Contained in that single breath are at least three nitrogen atoms that were breathed by every human being to ever live, including Jesus Christ, William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, and every president of the United States. This illustrates that the fact that everything we do affects other people, positively or negatively.”
If this is true then we are a part of every person who chooses to be balanced and they are a part of us. This does not mean that the violent individuals can try and rationalize saying, “society made me do it.” But, society can’t live in denial and shout we have no part of it and the individual is the only one to blame.
It appears that if a person is not stressed out then they are not breathing. Pressures of life, jobs, relationships, expectations of self and others, just to name a few make us feel like we are living on the verge of insanity. With this lifestyle many times are tolerance level for others plummets. When we become impatient with others we find it difficult to do a good deed and almost impossible to even speak a kind word to or about anyone. When everyone becomes this way then kindness is smothered out.
There is a simple principle that many know as the Golden Rule, which is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It seems simple, yet it is one of the most difficult principles to live by. However, that simple principal is one solution to the problem of violence and cruel words.
George Washington Carver had an interesting philosophy, “how far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong…Because someday in life you will have been all of these.”
Attempt to do something kind to someone else, but not to someone who has been kind to you, but to someone who would rather spit in your face than to say kind word to you, for that is true kindness and the hope of the future.
Originally written 5-12-99
TRS
Rays of Hope 