I often use kindness as a measure of how I’m doing. Honestly, it’s the easiest way to see where I’m really at. The easier I find kindness for someone tells me how focused I am on myself versus how I feel about them. Yet to be honest, it’s never that simple of a balance, no matter how I try to convince myself that it should be.
Because sometimes kindness gets mixed up with judgment, and meaning.
There are people in my life for whom kindness is never difficult to find. These are people who are either special to me, or who have been kind to me, or who have been through some incredible trial that I’m not sure I could’ve handled. Sometimes it’s just somebody who I admire because I feel like they are so much further along in their journey.
Sadly, that last paragraph is kind of an indictment of where I’m at.
Because kindness shouldn’t be something that we “give” based on actions, station or relationship. If it’s truly going to be kindness that we practice, then kindness has to be our intention regardless of the person we are being kind to. The person who cut you off on the freeway is just as valuable of a human as the person who let you cut in when you were in the wrong lane.
If my kindness requires judgment, I really should be asking myself if it’s kindness at all.
And to be honest, sometimes the amount of kindness I can muster is a direct reflection of how I feel things are going in my life. I realize that we are all human, and that most of us struggle at some time to find kindness, but realistically if I’m having a great day, if things are going well and if I’m feeling safe, stable and secure, then kindness is a lot easier to find when compared to days when things are going badly.
Kindness, it seems, is a much more difficult currency than I was expecting.
Yet kindness is something we should all practice. At its core, kindnesses is an emotion that moves us away from the focus on ourselves, and by its very nature commends to our subconscious that we are okay. Because truly, it is hard to feel kindness for somebody else if your emotional needs are so unmet that you can’t help but focus on yourself.
So the amount of kindness I can muster is truly a way of understanding that I’m doing okay, and of telling my subconscious that it’s safe to care about others.
Please don’t misunderstand, there are people for whom kindness is very difficult. Far be it for me to judge someone else’s life, someone else’s emotions. I once knew somebody who was so lonely in their soul that all the kindness that they performed was either to feel connection with someone, or to feel like they were being “a good person” so that they might feel that they were meeting the demands of their faith.
The kindness that you are doing out of obligation is not truly kindness, but the fulfillment of a sense of duty. The kindness that you perform in order to “improve a connection” is not truly kindness, but at its core is a selfish desire and an attempt at manipulation.
True kindness should be a gift that is given without any expectation of reward or gratitude.
As a young man, my kindness was reserved for those who could help me, or those who fit my sense of what was right. As the years of seasoned me, I have come to realize that true kindness is about me recognizing the divinity of someone’s inherent worth, and doing what I can to improve their experience of existence.
Because no matter who you are, you are worthy of kindness, no matter what you have done.
And in saying that, I mean you specifically. Not just the generic ‘you’ meaning everyone who is reading this, but you as an individual. No matter where you’re at in your life, no matter how lost, or alone, or guilty that you might feel, you being deserving of my kindness is a reflection of your humanity and your value.
Once you come to understand that, then you’ll start to see how everyone else is worthy of it as well. Because as long as you judge someone else’s right to receive kindness, based on your judgment, you’re going to apply that very same judgment to yourself, and you’ll find yourself treating yourself unkindly as well.
We are all on our own journey, and although someone’s journey may seem easier than yours, or more difficult than yours, or their behavior may seem “better” or “worse” than yours, the ultimate difficulty in spending the currency of kindness lies in remembering that each soul, each consciousness, has a value above and beyond that which is determined by their actions.
Once you understand that, you’ll see and treat them, and yourself, very differently.
And you will find peace.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings