Kindness

I am thinking about kindness. And I really think it is a currency of the future. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Abraham Joshua Herschel said: “When I was young I used to admire intelligent people, but as I grow older I admire kind people”.

Mark Twain said that kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. We live in times of mass “waking up” and the people are becoming more and more aware that it is more important what one wears on the inside than on the outside, and that it matters a lot more what comes out of one’s mouth than what goes in.  All of us are slowly becoming aware that it matters more what “eats us” than what we eat.

I found a beautiful quote by Audrey Hepburn:

For attractive lips: talk kindly.

For beautiful eyes: see the best in people.

For a good figure: share your food with the hungry.

For a pretty hair: let children pull their fingers through it.

For a proper posture: walk with a conviction that you are never alone.

This amazing woman instinctively knew what today neuroscience, epigenetics, psychoneuroimmunology affirm: kindness is an act that both the doer or the receiver are benefiting from. Life is a path of personal development of the soul and the world really is becoming a better place, do you agree? (If not, just imagine a toothache now and only a hundred years ago).

But the world is fixed by starting with yourself first because anything else is out of your capacity anyway. We are only allowed to deal with ourselves because people around us and ourselves too, deserve our best version! Can you imagine everybody being the best version of themselves? It would be paradise on earth.

We can’t change the world, but theoretically, if I am a good neighbor I inspire my neighbor to be a good neighbor too and slowly we become a good building, a good neighborhood… Think globally – act locally.

Everything starts with me, with oneself. I, logically, didn’t know how to be truly kind until I    wasn’t kind to myself. Why would I be compassionate towards someone else when I’m cruel to myself? If I can endure my own terror – everyone else can too. How will we honestly look into anyone’s eyes when we can’t look into our own in the mirror? Kindness is a skill. Maybe one of the most important, but it is a skill. So, just how you don’t expect to see the wanted results, don’t give up this “training of kindness”. You will profit multiple times. Emotionally = chemically = physically…

I don’t know where to start if I was to explain you the benefits of this “superphenomenon of kindness” and I know all of this sounds too simple and like a cliché for our complicated brains that love figuring out and solving puzzles and trickeries. But this blog is a so-called Food for thought thing and when you ended up reading it I want to share some nice bites for your analytical mind to chew on, which, ah I know, runs full speed all the time. Give it a toy. Try to be kind, be kind. First, kind to yourselves. Come on, be curious, try it! You can only win, I tried it and it’s a total win-win situation.

Kindness makes a fellow feel good whether it’s being done to him or by him.

                     Frank A. Clark

- Anđa Marić