Kindness is to life is as color is to a painter. Both are used for the creation of beauty. Both are used as acknowledgments of life.
Mark Joiner of Simpleology sent out an e-mail today with some information about Amelia Earhart that he wanted everyone to share with five other people. I’m going beyond that and putting it on my blog: On July 1, 1937 she set off to fly around the world. On July 2nd her plane mysteriously disappeared and she was never heard from again …She left the world with a great many things, one of them being this quote:
No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to
another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness
throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and
make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is
that it makes them kind themselves.
Thank you, Mark.
Yes, it is amazing what this positive energy can accomplish. It’s like turning on a light bulb. It eliminates the darkness. It has the knack of eliciting a response that is also kind. It seems like an obvious self-evident truth. But why is the world so unkind? Why do we have so many wars? How is it possible that in the 20th century over 100 million died violent deaths at the hands of other human beings?
What is the attitude of mind that makes this state of affairs possible? Is it a collective dysfunction of the human mind? Is it a misidentification of who and what we really are?
Any value that we have that does not embrace the whole is an illusory value. Fragmented thinking, excluding groups of people because they are different, is a cause of this collective dysfunction. I cringe every time I hear a politician say “God bless America.” If God is the source of everything and everyone, and is infinite, then why not invoke His blessing for the whole world.
It is easy to be kind to our friends. But when we are kind to strangers and adversaries, that is when its impact reaches full potential. Do you remember the words of JFK at his American University speech in June of 1963? He was speaking about American’s biggest adversary, The Soviet Union, but he wasn’t being exclusive, but inclusive. He recognized their humanity: “For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
Everybody in the world has divine essence within and is here in the world as an expression of divinity. But when we label, judge, categorize and refuse to try to understand, we lose ground. Fragmentation breeds contempt. Will the 21st century be a repeat of the 20th century with another 100 million violent deaths?
Or will kindness break out of its confinements and spread across the world like a flu epidemic?
Has it become easier for people to be infected with the flu than with kindness? After all, there isn’t a vaccine to prevent it. Only narrow minded thinking.
{ 2 } Comments
I just read your article on kindness Greg. It’s great. Everything you write is very good. But, (in giving another perspective) there is another quality that you have to balance with kindness in your life. In spirituality many things are a balance of two positives. If you go too far in one direction with a positive, (like kindness for example) it can actually become a negative. The balance for love is law. If you have too much love, or kindness. and no law, there is no backbone to it. It turns into attachment. Somebody is asking you for money and you want to be kind so you give it, and then you wonder why you get into problems and get yourself all mixed up with this person. Someone wants your time and you give it, once, twice, three times………….. for hours into the night and now you don’t get enough sleep. Now you’ve gone too far. Kindness does have its downside, although for the most part what this world needs is more kindness. Love and kindness does need the balance of law and discipline and setting boundaries. This is also a type of kindness. In spirituality there are many balances like this. For example flexibility and firmness, determination and easiness, tolerance and the courage to face, introversion and being with people.
Take care and have a good evening.
Om shanti,
Carol
Good intentions are not enough. A soft hearted soul can easily be pulled into helping another soul which is seen as kindness, but each soul is on their own individual journey and has arrived at the place they are at according to their own karma. The important thing is to have good wishes and loving feelings towards every soul and then to remain detached and non judgemental and give each soul a respectful space to be themselves. It may not be their time to change, which is perfectly okay.
Om Shanti.
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