Kindness

The Oxford Concise Dictionary defines the word ‘Kind’ as meaning ‘of a friendly, generous, benevolent or gentle nature and showing friendliness, affection or consideration etc’.

Have you ever given this much thought? I mean the dictionary’s definition would suggest that kindness is a sort of a disposition or a natural tendency. We may refer to people as being kind because it’s in their nature, but is that just a good excuse for the remainder of us not to consider being kind? Can anybody be kind even if it’s not something that comes easy to us? Can we learn to be kind? Do we want to?

If we want to become ‘kind’, how do we begin, where do we start? If we begin with the ‘intention’ to be ‘kind’, or if we ask ourselves ‘what is my intention? ’on a regular basis in all matters, this may give us a good starting point. This question can really throw back some amazing answers. Say for instance you choose the above intention; you may then ask yourself ‘in what spirit am I doing this?’ Am I doing it in the spirit of love? So you now have an intention to be kind with the spirit of love. WOW! What will happen next in the course of time is that you may start to think differently, and then you may start to act differently, because everything you do and say is in the spirit of love, you will constantly question your thoughts and actions to check if they are in keeping with the spirit of love (and kindness)

You may find now that you will make a big effort every opportunity you get to bestow random acts of kindness on yourself and others. You may surprise yourself by giving sincere compliments easily; you may offer your help or a listening ear to someone who needs to talk. You may surprise someone you really like or love, with a small gift or flowers (it’s better to give while the person is alive than at their graveside) you may smile more often at friends, relatives and strangers. You may find yourself doing things you wouldn’t have done before, little things like cleaning up litter outside your or your neighbour’s door, instead of grumbling about how dirty your street is. This can have a chain effect, as some people won’t want to be the one left with the litter outside their door! This way of thinking changes not only ourselves, but those people around us and hey, it’s good for the environment too!

So share your thoughts with me on this. Has your kindness or someone else’s impacted positively on your life. Has it made a difference? I hope it has.