Kindnessbringer

As it turns out, human beings are more likely to be kind than selfish. Experiments at Yale with infants University show them developing early signs of empathy toward their pees in distress, which has been concluded to be important to our societal development. Strange, I know, considering how often we are told to be evil creatures bent on destruction, and that the planet would be better off without us.

Kindness and trust has been linked to our ability for survival since the beginning. We wouldn’t be able to coexist if we were not able to give to others. To invest in their growth, to care about them, without expecting anything in return. That’s what love is about: the service of my full potential to the benefit of your life, and viceversa.

Kindness, however, has been politicized recently and used as a weapon to change legislature. It’s no longer defined like it used to be. It’s more likely to be linked to meekness and submission, than it is to strength of character, empathy, and service.

So how to define kindness without the grubby fingers of politics getting in the way? Kindness means to have hope for the future of humanity. It means you want to do your part in preserving what we have, and perhaps, making it better. You are kind by helping those in need, yes, but you are also kind when you invest in growth. Investing in growth is not just feeding the hungry, or throwing money at other people’s problems. Investing can also be sharing knowledge, preparing others, growing a community than wants to create a positive feedback loop of helping and giving, sowing seeds of good tradition, learning to love honestly, etc.

Kindness is not handing a 5 dollar bill to the addict who’ll use it to get high, it’s not lending money to the friend who knows won’t pay you back, it’s not helping a shy person speak up, it’s not being a direct influence on someone’s life to solve a short-term problem. A kind person teaches to fish instead of giving fish. A kind person knows how to influence another for the permanent betterment of their lives, and not the immediate circumstance.

Being nice is not being kind, being submissive and a yes person is not being kind, and allowing yourself to be manipulated for the sake of others, and the detriment of your own self, is not kindness; it is weakness.