Choose Kindness. Always.

I was planning on writing a completely different blog post this week. I even started to work on it and then on Monday night, as I was brushing my teeth to go to bed, inspiration came and I couldn't stop writing. And now I have finally had time to turn the random thoughts into a readable post. So here we go...when the inspiration comes, I guess it's a good idea to give it an outlet!

At the start of the year I named 2018 the year of Kindness. I like to have a theme for each year, a focus, and this is what I felt was right for the year. I felt like I already had a pretty good idea of what kindness meant, but I think it's different when you actually make the commitment that you are going to apply it to your everyday life, in every context. It wasn't just a nice word that I like, but I decided that above any accomplishments, work, beauty, popularity or anything else commonly strived for, I would love to be known for my kindness.

Most of the time I don't find it difficult to be kind to people. I love people, I love socialising, being around people, making new friends, and I love helping people. I was a social worker & I loved it. I loved believing the best in people and encouraging them.

But the truth is, some days it’s hard to be genuinely kind. This is often when I feel hurt, disappointed or sometimes helpless. I find that my natural thoughts go straight to: “they did that on purpose", or "why didn't they think of me?" - which is false the majority of the time. It’s funny, as humans it’s natural for us to always see ourselves in the picture - to react to situations based on how we perceived that the situation related to us.

I also often feel so helpless when I see strangers needing help - thinking, I can’t help them all, or questioning them (because of things I’ve seen before, more on this later). Compassion fatigue is a real thing. But also I have noticed that it’s super easy to become conditioned by our environment and the culture we’re in. If everyone else walks past, ignores, or doesn’t help, it’s easy for us to end up doing the same.

And then from these places it can be hard to be kind. I don’t necessarily mean just saying something unkind to another person's face. But to be kind in our thoughts towards them, and how we portray them to those near to us.

I went to a conference called Colour earlier this year and a man named Bob Goff shared this awesome line: “Love everybody, always”. I love this and was so challenged by it. Kindness is not something that you turn on and off, or you pick and choose. It’s everybody, always.

I am a Christian and my belief is that the most important thing we can do on this earth is to love God & love others - in what we say to their faces and what we say about them. I love this and strive for this. However it’s not always easy. We know the saying “hurt people, hurt people”. It’s often something we say when talking about bullying or people that hurt us. It’s so true. But what we also need to remember is if we are hurt, that means that we have to make the decision to not react the same and to hurt others. It can be hard.

A perspective that I learnt from my studies, and have tried to adopt and apply to my life & something that I need to remind myself always is to believe that everyone is doing the best that they can. It may sound naive to believe that. Particularly about people who hurt you often. But I’ve found the times when I do adopt this mindset it doesn’t excuse their behavior but it gives me the grace to respond to them in a kind way. To continue to believe in them. And it also helps to avoid the awful feelings that unkindness can bring.

Also, going back to a previous note, I mentioned that sometimes it can be hard to be kind to be people because we don't trust them or agree with their intentions. A while ago I was on the metro. I got off at a station and saw a man bum shuffling along the ground. It appeared as if he had lost a leg and was disabled. As I looked towards him moving I saw that he actually had folded his leg up in his pants and was pretending to be disabled. To be honest my first response was “oh my gosh. He’s fooling everyone. That’s terrible”. But pretty much straight after saying that in my head I was so challenged. I changed my mindset and thought: "Wow, what’s going on in his life that he feels like he has to pretend to be disabled, and crawl along the metro floors (which are so dirty) begging for money?". It was crazy how changing my thinking changed my attitude towards him and the kindness that I wanted to show.

Kindness is a challenge, and a daily decision. Our initial reaction in bad interactions may be to feel hurt or angry. Trying to avoid that sometimes doesn’t work, nor does feeling guilty. But I reckon that choosing kindness is admitting and understanding our humanity, and deciding anyway to be kind - to love anyway and to always believe the best in people.

So there’s a couple of thoughts, on a big topic. But hopefully it brings someone some encouragement. And remember believing that everyone is doing the best they can, also includes you too! Kindness to others AND kindness to yourself is so important.