Kind
Meaning: generous, good
Synonyms: compassionate, friendly, gracious, loving, thoughtful – to name a few.
Antonyms: bad, bitter, cruel, inconsiderate, unfriendly, ungenerous
Being kind should come easily. I remember being in high school. We would have these books going around, I do not remember what we called them, but in these books we would write what we thought about other people. This does not sound very kind, but all of our names were in there and it was all in fun. In these books we always put “kind” next to a person’s name we liked. Looking back, the ones with all the KINDS beside their name were always the ones who were inconsiderate, talked behind your back or frowned when something good happened to someone other than them. Maybe we put kind down because we didn’t want to admit how we really felt about those people. We were giving out this emotion as a title not as a feeling and we all wanted to be considered “kind”. I believe that to some extent we are all kind……but do we “feel” kind aka generous? This is the question.
Kind should of course be an emotion that we feel daily, it should not need to be forced. Think about it, isn’t kind a part of who we really are. It is natural to frown when others win out over us, this does not mean that we are secretly unkind. It simply means that we are capable of feeling many things and it is ok to “go there” once in a while.
Of course there will be times in life when we experience feelings of bitterness, cruelty and unfairness. We all raise our voices at those we love because they are simply “in our way”. We may swear at an unbeknownst driver for cutting us off. We lie to get our way, and curse our neighbor because he always gets the breaks. I have done all of this. Sometimes I have these great conversations in my mind where I tell the people I am angry at exactly what I think about them. Am I still holding the emotion “kind” while I have these thoughts or do these things? I believe so, yes. I believe with all of my heart that kind is a part of human nature. Some of us just let go for too long and in doing so begin to thrive on cruelty.
Some rules would be:
Rule One: Generous people attract kindness. Kind people bring out generosity in others.
Rule Two: Be extra kind at least once a day, this means going out of your way for someone else. Being cruel is exhausting.
I believe that the world is made up of kind people. I was raised in a family where prayer was highly recommended. I too recommend prayer being part of your daily life, but you see, my family prayed for all the bad people in the world and I was told to keep praying because the world is a sad place filled with mean people. It took years of practice but today I do not see the world as being a scary place filled with rotten people. To me the world is filled with kindness. I mean really, look around you. We come together for so many causes. We donate to flood victims, raise money for the poor, help the lost, and fulfill the wishes of those who are dying. And these are just a few of the many, many things we do daily. These are wonderful things, done by wonderful people, who are living their life based on the emotion “kind”. It is true that there may be a few bad apples amongst us, but is it true that they do not know kind?. Maybe these people need someone to be extra kind to them today. Maybe these “bad” people “went there” and haven’t come back. Maybe, just maybe, we can help someone come back today.
I do not feel that I need to live each day choosing kind as an emotion. I feel as if “kind” has chosen me. What I need to know is that I can always go a little further and be a little more thoughtful. I do not want to take this emotion for granted. I want to be gracious in my giving and loving in my living.
Rule Three: Remember the bad apple; a little thought into how you slice it and it may still be saved.
