A Year Of Kindness (XXXI): Reminding People They Matter

 

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Some of greatest kindnesses offered to me were offered by people that did not have time to spend with me but spent it with me anyway.  And some of the greatest discomforts I have had are by people who clearly indicated that they did not want to spend time with me but were doing it in a begrudging fashion.

Even the very act of stopping, listening fully, and engaging - even when we do not feel like we have the time - can have untold benefits in the lives of others.  We are showing them that are important - maybe more important than they feel they are.

We can practice kindness in the most seemingly insignificant moments - or at least, seemingly insignificant to us.

A Year Of Kindness (XXX): A Reason To Be Kind

 "If you look at the world, it's very easy to get dejected.  The situation you find yourself in, often you hope no one finds themselves in.  But this is all the more reason to be kind and caring.  If you spot someone in a spot of bother, and you have the ability to do something about it, do it.  Pay it forward.  Not just for your own sake, but as a matter of common decency from someone who knows how tough it can be.

There's nothing stopping you from being kind."

- Tim Bunting, The Kiwi Yamabushi (Source)

Tim Bunting  (The Kiwi Yamabushi) is a New Zealander who lives in Northern Japan. He is a practitioner of Shugendo, a native religion of Japan.  Its practitioners are known as yamabushi (literally "mountain warrior").  His website (over at the right) explains the concepts far better than I can.  I will also note for the record that he is a stand up fellow; I've spoken with him a couple of times.

His meditation on kindness is one that made me think.

Each of us, somewhere in our lives, has a tale of woe or two beneath our belts.  We have been betrayed, abandoned, treated poorly, accused without cause, rejected.  We know that that feeling is like, the days or weeks or years of depression and despair and anger.

We know, as the saying goes, what it is actually all about.

But that knowledge, suggests Bunting, is precisely the sort of thing that should urge us on to more acts of kindness.  We know.  We have been there.  We remember.  And - assuming that we have some level of human decency about us - we would not willingly wish that on others. 

There is often not a lot we can do in such situations, but there is one thing we can always do:  Be kind.  Be caring.

Because we know.  We remember.  And while maybe we cannot change what a person is facing in that moment, we can make the moment lighter for them - perhaps, we realize as someone did for us in our own similar states.  

It costs us nothing to help pick up a burden for even a moment.  But such kindness can mean the world to another.

A Year Of Kindness (XXIX): Stay Humble, Stay Kind

 

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One of the things that I am reminded of is that, like many personality traits, kindness (and humility) are something that I need to continually practice.  It is not, in that sense, a "one and done" kind of thing.

In some cases I can predict when my kindness will be at a low ebb:  Early morning, for example.  After a contentious meeting.  The moment on Tuesdays when I realize it is not Wednesday and the week seems to suddenly get longer.  These moments conspire to reduce the things I should be - kind, humble, generous, loving - to as small a trait as possible.

But it is especially in those moments that I need to practice them all the more.

  

The longer I live (and the longer I write these kinds of series), the more I become convinced that things like kindness and humility are important.  Not just because of the practice themselves, but the model that they provide.

I do not feel it is beyond the pale to say that if anything, our society has become even more "me-centric" than ever.  It does not help that as a consumer society, the market is set up to meet our needs and desires; many people have extended that same belief to almost everything around them.  "We" are the most important thing going on in our minds.

Which is why good models matter all the more.  Because people need to see that good people still exist and can practice character traits which seem not to benefit themselves directly at all, but benefit the world greatly.

So stay kind.  Stay humble.  The world indeed needs such reminders.

A Year Of Kindness (XXVIII): Be A Memory Of Kindness

 

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Nine months into my first industry job, I evacuated the entire second floor of a building.

It was an innocent enough thing:  removing a 4 L bottle of nitric acid from the acid storage cabinet, it hit the floor at just the right angle to crack it.  The acid began to leak out. I was not sure what to do, so I looked at it, dithered a bit, then went and found my supervisor.  Within 10 minutes the lab was shut as the acid outgassed and the second floor evacuated. All on the day of the company Christmas party, where I when scheduled to be Santa's stand-in but instead got my fingers taped up for (very) minor acid discoloration and sent home. 

Over the weekend, the rest of the team came in and completely wiped down the lab and everything in it.  No-one asked me to come.  No-one said a word about it afterwards.  It was just part of what people did.

I have memories like this scattered across my life and memory:  The Director and Uisdean Ruadh who looked after me at my worst, friends who guided me when I was being an idiot, a young tow truck driver who offered me half his sandwich when I was cold and miserable looking after I hit a curb and bent my rim the day before I was to leave for Japan, my coworkers after my being laid off.

A thousand stars, lit in the darkness of despair.

I have lost track of many of those people.  I doubt some of them remember the acts they did at the time.  But those acts keeping me thinking of them at odd moments and in the moments when I castigate myself for mistakes.  

It costs nothing to be kind.  But the act and the memory will live on long, long after events and perhaps even the acquaintance.

Be someone's inspiring memory.  Be kind.

A Year Of Kindness (XXVII): Loaning Our Strength

 

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One of the interesting things in doing a series like this is the very different thoughts that present themselves, ways of looking at things like humility or kindness in different ways.  Today's thought - Kindness as loaning someone our strength - is one of those items.

If I think about it initially, that seems counterintuitive to me.  When I am kind, it is myself that is taking the action.  It is not a loan as I would typically think about it, a temporary giving of something that I possess.

But if I think about it a little more, I realize my understanding is shallow.

Some of the times people have extended their kindness to me were times when I was truly in a spot of weakness - depressed, feeling lost, often reeling from the results of my own sin or thoughtlessness.  In those moments, the kindness of others never once reminded me of my current condition or how I had gotten there. It gave me the strength to get through the moment.

Sometimes that loaning of strength through kindness was for a moment.  Sometimes, as it turns out, it was for years. But in my case, the people that were kind, that lent me their strength, were never stingy about it.

We are all stronger than we think we are - and having that strength, we can afford to lend it to those in need of a little kindness to help them be strong in their own times of need.

I can show my strength.  I can be kind.

A Year Of Kindness (XXVI): We Don't Have To Agree...

 

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When I was younger, I was not very good at being kind to people with whom I did not agree.

Part of the problem was likely the fact that I suffered from a planet-sized ego (not unusual for young men) and was relatively certain that I had the right of things.  When disagreements came, it was as much of a personal attack as it was a discussion of issues.

Part of the problem as well was the fact that, well, the people that disagreed with me were not always kind either (possibly they saw the world in that sense exactly as I saw it).  The behaviour ranged the gamut from politely sniffing in conversation to exchanges to the banishment from their circle of contact. Which, of course, continued to justify my own behaviour.

And then one day I realized that kindness exercised by me had little if anything to do with how it was extended to me.  It had a great deal, however, to do with how I saw kindness.

It strikes me that sometimes I felt like kindness was a gift that I extended to some but not to others, something that I had the right to dispense as I saw fit.  It was in some ways similar to purchasing a round of drinks at the coffee bar: one looks at how many are there and who is there and then decides if one is really feeling that generous.

But kindness - although arguably being seen as a gift - is not something that I should dole out based on the condition of a person or, indeed if I agree with them.  Kindness is something that I should - and can - extend, perhaps in spite of what they - or I - believe.

"But they are not kind to you."  They were not kind to my Master either, yet He was kind back.

"They see kindness as weakness."  Possibly.  But if I allow kindness to become weakness, that is really on me then, not on them.

"Your kindness does not matter."  Not necessarily in the way one might think.  Yes, it might not have an immediate impact (although it might).  But the spectacle of the kind, the good, the beautiful, facing off with that which would seek to degrade it or silence it can be quite striking (and telling). And one never knows what impact that kindness might have years from now.

I cannot change circumstances.  I cannot change others.  I can only manage myself.  And I can choose to be kind, no matter whether or not I agree with anyone.

After all, the kind are remembered kindly.

A Year Of Kindness (XXV): Gentle And Lowly In Heart

 "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me:  for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." - Matthew 11: 28-30

This set of verses are probably some of the best known and most quoted in the New Testament.  They speak to what it is like to have Christ as our Master.  The usual thing that is pointed to (I suspect) is the contrast between what we would expect from God and what He is actually like. 

But this being a series about kindness, we are looking at something a little different today.

My focus is on that part of the reading that says...."learn from Me:  for I am gentle and lowly in heart..."

The first aspect - one I have not really ever thought about until reading the verse for this posting - is the idea of "learn from Me".  Learning is not something I typically think of in my relationship with Christ.  Obedience, yes.  Confession, yes.  But learning in the sense that we learn from a teacher or mentor?  I have not ever thought of it this way.  It almost seems presumptuous, this "learning from God".

And what are we to learn?  "Gentleness and lowliness of heart".

If you are thinking that gentleness and lowliness of heart are aspects of kindness, you would not be wrong.

Christ was kind - infinitely kind to those around Him (with the exception of the presumptuous of heart and mis-quoters of Scripture, of course).  "A bruised reed He will not break", spoken of in the prophet Isaiah, aptly describes His relationship with both those seeking God as well as sinners who knew they were sinners. He practiced kindness in a way that might have struck folks as revolutionary: the association of religious teachers with "kind" does not come across any more frequently in Scripture then than it does in modern life.

Learn, says Christ, from me.

Are we gentle and lowly of heart (humility is not a bad synonym here) when we deal with others?  "Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others" says Paul in Philippians 2.  Or do we practice the "kindness" of the world, a self-interested set of actions that somehow always manage to set us up for success first and foremost or leave others feeling less heard and attended to and more used?

To be gentle and lowly of heart is a world that values this more in theory than in practice is, frankly, hard.  You will get ignored.  You will get over-run.  You will get stepped on.  And yet...

You will also make a difference in someone's life.  You may be the one good thing that happens to that person that day.  You, in the practice of lowliness and gentleness of heart, may give someone the one glimpse of Christ they may see in a day, a week, a month, or even a year.

Learn, says Christ, from me.  And then go do what I did and still do, practicing gentleness and lowliness of heart.  

Go, and practice kindness.

A Year Of Kindness (XXIV): Be The Thread

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One of the interesting things about participating in any sort of human association - work, religious group, volunteer, hobby - is that we are very often glazed vessels as we interact.

By "glazed vessels" I mean to say that we often present a hard shell of an image to the outer world and those we interact with.  Part of that is undoubtedly self-protection of course; there is nothing worse than exposing one's inner core and having it savaged or mocked.  But the other is a conscious choice:  it is not something we do.  There is a vague suggestion of societal impoliteness about the whole thing, whether it be inflicting ourselves on others or the idea that one simply does not impose one's own problems on others.

And so we clink off each other like marbles in a bag, a description I read long ago.

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The reality is that sometimes - through circumstances, odd comments, or simple observation, we learn more than we intend.

I am thinking of the moment of various coworkers I have that - although I officially do not "know" anything - know that they are going through significant life struggles and changes of their own.  Were I to ask after it, it would of course be denied or laughed off as a temporary state of affairs. And yes from the report of those I trust and are "In the know" (as the kids say), the events and struggles are real.

Everyone, they say, is fighting a battle no-one knows anything of.

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I have to remind myself of this when situations arise and I become frustrated or even upset with them (and yes, even I can become frustrated or upset with people).  I have to remind myself that sometimes they are reacting out of the place of their challenge or hurt or pain, that sometimes them showing up at all is a victory.  I have to remind myself that separating the situation and the person is necessary: as I have commented to my adopted work children, I always love the person, I may not always love them in their role.

Which makes going out of my way to practice kindness even the more important.  At the very least, I should not add to their load by my own behaviour; at the most, that one kindness may be the thing that helps them through day.

Likely those simple acts cost me little except inconvenience and perhaps dealing with my own issues of pride and always needing to be right.  The benefit they provide may be immeasurable - after all, who among us knows if we are that one particular thread of kindness that day, perhaps the only one they may see?

A Year Of Kindness (XXIII): Kindness Is Not An Act...

 

People can fake kindness for a bit, but eventually it comes across as forced or self-seeking.  

The very kindest of people do not so much do kindness as they are kindness; it is their very nature.

A Year Of Kindness (XXII): Make Their Day

 

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The more I ponder kindness and look for quotes and thoughts on it, the more that I find that I am realizing the seeming ordinariness of it.

Yes, of course there are extravagant gestures of kindness (the Cross being the biggest ever, of course).  And yet, extravagant gestures are very often a one time sort of event.

Most kindness is the sort of thing I can practice every day.  It really can be the simplest of gestures:   A smile.  Holding the door.  Giving a small gift to someone for no reason.  Listening to someone who needs to talk.  

It is odd to me that I think about such things as a sort of choice:  Should I do this?  Could I do this?

Sometimes it is an inconvenience.  Sometimes it is something that costs us something.  But given that kindness is something that I as a Christian am a beneficiary of from God, why do I even ask the question?  If I have the opportunity to make someone's day better, should I not always take it?

I suspect - sadly - my unwillingness to do so reveal more about me and my own self centeredness.

If by doing an act of kindness I can make someone else's day, I should being doing it.  Full stop.

After all, life is hard.  By kindness I can at least make it a bit better, even if for a short time.

A Year Of Kindness (XX): Leave A Trail Of Kindness

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We all leave a trail in our life.

We are all trailblazers: every day we move into the virgin wilderness of the new day.  Every night we make our campfire in the evening, the day's trail behind us lost in the darkness of time.

The trail itself is, for the most part invisible, a series of events and encounters and feelings which for the most part are transient in nature (but not always).  There are times we leave physical presence, for good or ill - a gift, a thing built; on the other side an injury, a scar physical or psychic.   But really, we cannot see the trail we leave for the most part.

But that trail never really disappears.

I can recall kindnesses and injuries done to me years ago from the trails of others:  the times I was excluded or I in turn excluded others, the times things were taken from me or I took things from others, words of kindness or ill intent for which I can still picture the sound of the voice in my head and the place it happened.

Every day, a trail in the lives of others.

We cannot change the trail up to this point: it is engraved in the merciless stone of the past with a pen made of adamantium.  But the trail today is ours for the writing:  we can leave whatever sorts of mark we want on the paper of today.  And it lies within our power to leave a trail of kindness, of thoughts and memories that will follow our memory in the lives of others with joy and encouragement and good feelings.

No matter what, we will leave that trail.  And if we are doing so anyway, why not a trail of kindness?

A Year Of Kindness (XIX): The Smallest Act Of Kindness

 

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We can have the greatest intensions in the world.  But the smallest act of kindness rendered is greater than all the intentions that are never kept.

A Year Of Kindness (XVIII): Be The Reason Someone Smiles

 

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Sometimes we confuse the size of a kindness with its result. 

Certainly I am guilty of thinking I have to do some grand gesture.  Turns out that can be completely wrong:  sometimes people do not want the big grand gesture or are embarrassed if you do it because you are drawing attention to them in the wrong way.

A smile, a kind word, even a moment where we are able to express that in some way we know what they are going through and care, that no matter what the circumstances they are in they are still worthy simply because they are created in the image of God.

After all, no kindness - no matter how small - is ever wasted.

A Year Of Kindness (XVII): The Kindness Of Dignity

Some years ago - less years than I would like, honestly - I was in a meeting with the senior executives of my then-employer.  About 10 minutes into the meeting, a colleague - a work friend, really - walked in and sat down.  Reacting immediately - I thought much less then than I do now - I made a quip about the starting time.  Executive management laughed.  My friend said nothing at the time - but after the meeting, clearly communicated her anger and embarrassment at my comment at her expense.  For weeks she did not talk to me and even when she started doing so in the last few weeks before her departure, it our relationship was never the same.

I learned a very important - and painful - lesson about the kindness of dignity that day.

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Dignity (dig-nǝ-tē):  The quality of being worth of esteem or honor; worthiness; high repute or honor; the degree of worth, repute, or honor; proper pride and self respect. - Webster's New Word Dictionary, Second College Edition:  1948, Simon and Schuster, New York

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Dignity is a trait that has fallen on hard times in the modern world, partially because it has been consciously abandoned as a behaviour pattern and partially because it is not held as a trait of value.  That is not surprising:  after all, if one abandons something it becomes very hard to value it.

Society as a whole has abandoned the idea of dignity:  individuals literally live their lives with no sense of restraint or things which simply are not put out into to public because (at one time) such things remained private matters.  But society has also abandoned the idea of allowing others their dignity:  too often, things are a combination of combat blood sport and personal/professional conquest on a scale that the Mongol Empire would have admired.  People cannot be allowed the grace of exiting quietly or choosing to end a discussion or argument or even just of silently withdrawing.  

The other side, of course, is the side that I exhibited:  the fact that one sacrifices the dignity of another to get ahead.  Be it the long overloud laugh at the expense of another in my case or be it willing misunderstanding of a position (or at least not being willing to take that time), we seem to have embraced the idea that there is nothing sacred in the path to get ahead or "one up" on someone else.

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How is dignity a kindness?

When we allow someone their dignity, we allow them their personhood - really, we allow them the image of God that they were created in, just as we were created in the same image.  We respect that fact that people sometimes get it wrong, that people are sometimes off, that people do not necessarily care about the same things we do or that they may see things differently, that people are....just like us, with frailties and challenges that they have to address just like we do.

When we practice the kindness of dignity, we follow Christ - who always allowed the true seekers and those who needed His healing to ask questions and beg for His aid without making them feel anything less.

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What have I learned in the intervening period about allowing others the kindness of dignity?:

- I have learned that I need not always solve an issue right there in public, but much can be solved in private conversations.

- I have learned to let people defer or even retreat without haranguing them for an answer or commitment.

- I have learned to monitor myself and my humour such that the butt of any joke, if there is one needed, is me.

- I have learned that by treating people with dignity, I in turned show I value dignity.

It may seem a small thing, to treat something with dignity.  But after all no kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

A Year Of Kindness (XVI): Stopping My Unkindness

While I try to practice kindness and be kind, it is shocking to me how often and how quickly I can become unkind. 

The flow of events is well known to me, if I care to sit and think about it. I fixate on a person or a group or an idea (and the people ultimately that the idea represents).  I become focused on it, then aggravated about it, and the first thing I know I am into unkindness  Maybe not to their face - somehow I find I lack that particular courage - but I think of and speak of their flaws, their behaviours, even their personality.  I make judgements too often based purely on the outward rather than a full set of data.

I have written of this before of course, this not knowing what everyone else is facing and thus what is impacting their lives.  People - myself included - come into every situation with long term and short term baggage, and sometimes an encounter is simply catching someone at the wrong time.

I write this.  I do not practice this as much as I should.

The key, I think, to breaking this chain is twofold:

1) The first is to recall how kind God is to us.  All the time, even knowing our backgrounds and our long and short term baggage.  If He knows all of that and yet continues to shower us with love and kindnesses (chesed), we can probably at least try to do the change.

2) The second is simply to break the chain.  When I start to fixate, I need to stop immediately. Nothing good ever comes of thinking about how a person aggravates you.  It immediately diverts me into a track that runs into a dark and tortured place, if I allow it.

If given a choice between starting the fixation and the grumbling or choosing to stop it and choose kindness, I always need to choose kindness.

After all, no act of kindness is wasted.

A Year Of Kindness (XV): The Power Of A Kindness

 This past week at work, I strode into work at my usual time, expecting - as usual - to go through my usual round of greetings as well, my e-mail check, and the early morning beginnings of whatever today's dumpster fire was destined to be.  Imagine my surprise when one of my colleagues came up and said "Hey, would like a doughnut?"  It was exactly the sort of thing I probably should not be eating at this point, chocolate covered with white frosting lacing on top.  

I ate it anyway.  And it was delicious.  

But the impact of the doughnut lasted long after I had carefully extracted the last bit from the napkin it came in.  I was touched. Someone had thought enough of me to bring me something.

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I find it striking in the Gospels that a great many of the miracles that Jesus did and a great many of the people Jesus talked with are nameless.

The woman at the well, the woman with the flow of blood, the son of the widow in the city at Nain, the man lowered down from the upper story, many others - all of these are recipients of Christ's kindness and all of them are nameless to us now. For most of them, this (so far as we know) was the one encounter they had with Christ.  Most of them never appear again in the Gospels or the New Testament that we know of, but is hard to believe that the impact that Christ had on them at the moment did not change their lives forever.  We read of the believers in Jerusalem and Israel in those early days of the church; it is hard to believe that those touched by Christ and His kindness were not some of them.

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I am often tempted by the idea that offering a kindness is something of an inconvenience sometimes, or even downright difficult to those to whom I scarcely feel kindly towards.  Yet I need look only at the evidence in my own life, and in the actions of Christ, to know that the impact of even a single kind action can reverberate throughout a day or indeed, throughout eternity.

After all, no kindness is ever wasted.

A Year Of Kindness (XIV): Thinking Kindly Of Others

As you might imagine (even more so than ever), a great deal of my work life consists of sitting in meetings and listening/talking to people.

Which is fine, of course.  The difficulty is that, well, there are actual people involved.

Some people are easy talk to and easy to work with.  There are other individuals that I find...how shall I say it....challenging. 

By "challenging" I do not mean that they are yelling all the time or trying to completely have their own way about things or dominate the conversation or even treat me badly. It is just that sometimes they seem to have the ability to hit me the wrong way.  Repeatedly. 

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Personal interactions are funny things.  There is a part of us that simply reacts to people that we like and like us back.  There are people that are easy to interact with because they are easy to deal with. There is never a sense of transactional interactions; you have conversations and if things need to be done or money to be exchanged or feelings need to be expressed, it happens organically.

But then there are all those other people.  The people that do not like us, or at least not all the time.  The people that always seem to reject what we have to say out of hand.  The people who with whom almost everything feels transactional, where things to be done become favours to be called in and repayment is mentioned frequently and to the penny and actual feelings may never expressed as one worries what happens if a true feeling is given out (it feels more like offer a weak point rather than an expression).

But these, I need to remind myself often, God loves as well.

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It is easy to think kindly of those we like and care for. It is difficult think kindly of those we do not.

And yet, as someone has said (and I am badly paraphrasing), all people are essentially unknown to each other at their cores, let alone our personal interactions. People have physical issues of constant pain, people have emotional or relational issues of failing marriages or wandering children or an unexpected sickness.  People are in fear of a thousand things we do not know anything about.  And for almost all of these issues, unless the information is volunteered it will never be known:  open confessions about such things often bear all awkwardness of crashing into a waiter at a fancy party and hearing the tray and all the plates hit the ground.

And yet, the Christian's charge is to be kind to everyone.  Whether we like them or not.  Whether we "gel" with them or not (or "vibe", as the kids now say).  Whether they are even likeable people or not.

Because who knows.  Maybe our one act of kindness is the thing that turns their day from bad to good. Perhaps it is the thought or word that sends them down a different path.  Maybe it just gives them a warm feeling free of the burdens they are bearing for a short time.

After all, no kindness is ever wasted.

A Year Of Kindness (XIII): Love Kindness

 "He has shown, O Man

what is good;

and what does the Lord your God require of you

but to do justice

and love kindness

and walk humbly with your God?"

(Micah 6:8)

I find it fascinating that in the verse from Micah, God lists only three things that He required to those to whom His message was addressed:  Do justice, Love kindness, Walk humbly with Him.

Humility we discussed last year and justice is far too lofty a subject for me to discuss.  But I do find it fascinating that the command "Love kindness" is present.  It not necessarily what I would have expected.

The backdrop to this is seen in the earlier verses in chapter 6, where the prophet is noting how Israel had abandoned the God that had brought them out of Egypt, and how one could expect that God could forgive him, what manner of offerings would be needed - up to and including children - to make it right with God?

God's response through Micah is simple, as we see above:  be just, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

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Do I love kindness?  Do I really love it as God says I should? Or is too often a burden, something that I have to do in order?

For me, it is often both.  Sometimes I have no problem offering kindness.  Sometimes kindness is offered through gritted teeth and a tongue that is working hard to control itself.  Why such a dichotomy?

Because I make kindness too often about how I feel, not what God commands.

God's kindness - His mercy - is abundant and overflowing all the time, not just the times that it is convenient for Him.  He may be sad with me, He may be disappointed in my actions, but never does His Kindness fail me or really any of us.  His Common Grace - the sun rising, the rains, the growth of things for food - extend to all, even those who hate Him.

If His kindness never fails, His expectation is that His children should be the same.

One wonders if  we simply took Him at His word and loved kindness as he loves kindness, how different our lives and our witness might be.

A Year Of Kindness (XI): The Lion And The Mouse

 

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The Lion And The Mouse

A Lion lay asleep in the forest, his great head resting on his paws. A timid little Mouse came upon him unexpectedly, and in her fright and haste to get away, ran across the Lion's nose. Roused from his nap, the Lion laid his huge paw angrily on the tiny creature to kill her.

"Spare me!" begged the poor Mouse. "Please let me go and some day I will surely repay you."

The Lion was much amused to think that a Mouse could ever help him. But he was generous and finally let the Mouse go.

Some days later, while stalking his prey in the forest, the Lion was caught in the toils of a hunter's net. Unable to free himself, he filled the forest with his angry roaring. The Mouse knew the voice and quickly found the Lion struggling in the net. Running to one of the great ropes that bound him, she gnawed it until it parted, and soon the Lion was free.

"You laughed when I said I would repay you," said the Mouse. "Now you see that even a Mouse can help a Lion."

A kindness is never wasted.

- Aesop (~620-564 B.C.)  (Source)

A Year Of Kindness (X): The Quiet Ones

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 Among the few things that will even send me into what passes as a rage is the mistreatment of animals (or really, I suppose, Nature of any kind).

I am mindful of the comment by the late Gene Logsdon that "Mother Nature could just as well be called Old ***** Nature."  Nature is as cruel as it is caring.  Logsdon uses the image of a buck being brought down by a pack of coyotes or wolves, the last minutes of pain and terror; is this not, he asks, not more cruel than a sudden event that ends in the same manner but without suffering or foreknowledge?

But the fact that Nature is cruel does not mean that anyone has the right to make it more cruel.  The same goes for how we treat people.

Animals can give signs and indications that something is not right, but it is not as if they have words that can tell you such things.  The reality is that the same is true for people as well.

I wonder if we often grasp the fact that for every person that can verbalize clearly mistreatment or harm that there are far more that cannot.  They have learned to simply muddle through life with the coping mechanism that they have in place - perhaps from a place of fear of what might happen if they do or perhaps from a place where they have never come to know or expect anything else.

I write this, I suppose, with a bit more of an edge than I usual approach such things.  For me, this is something personal.  I am one of those silent ones.

No, there is no significantly traumatic event in my past that has brought me to this as others have.  It is something that is more in my nature, likely compounded by the fact that as an introvert and someone who is conflict-adverse, I simply do not push back.  I have learned to manage through things to keep the peace and move things forward. 

If you have never paid such a price, do not underestimate the cost on the person involved.  It can be far more than you think.

Which, of course, is where kindness comes in.

Kindness, when practiced freely and without limit, acts as a buffer to such people (and animals as well).  We may never know what other people are going through - and by the practice of kindness, they may never feel the need to tell us.  What they will feel is noticed, attended to, respected. 

Even, dare we say it, loved and of infinite value.  Sort of like how God see us.

You can always tell when animals have been treated kindly.  They will show it in their reactions to you.  The same, I think, can be said of people.  It may be in an unexpected conversation or an unlooked for gesture or something that they present you - in physical form or words or music or really anything.  Something that they would not share with anyone but someone whom they feel safe with.

And ultimately, perhaps that is an aspect of kindness we never consider:  we create a space which is safe for everyone to feel comfortable and be themselves.  Which, as an introvert, I can assure is one of the greatest gifts you can give.