On the occasion of World Kindness Day, I am writing to you about kindness. But before I talk about kindness, I would like to ask you a question. Why do we need a day for kindness? Has the world stooped so low that we need to mark out a special day to do a kindness or to talk about it or to even create and spread awareness about it?
In the dictionary, kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous and considerate. Whereas being kind is doing intentional, voluntary acts of kindness. Not only when it is easy to be kind, but when it is hard. A kind person is loving and giving out of the goodness of their heart. Kind people have good self-esteem and because they love themselves as much as they care about others, they expect to be treated with respect.
Kindness is important. When we practice kindness either to other people or towards ourselves, we experience positive mental and physical changes through lowering stress levels and increasing the bodies production of the feel-good hormones such as dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. Kindness has been proven to increase our happiness, reduce stress and improve emotional wellbeing. At the same time spreading kindness offers us the opportunity to connect with others building a strong sense of community and unity with friends, family, neighbours and even strangers.
We sometimes do acts of kindness without even realizing it, that is what it should be. People do random acts of kindness by donating old clothes or other things to needy people. Planting a tree also constitutes an act of kindness. Listing to someone vent out their problems is another way of showing kindness. How many of you have had to face mean people in your life? These are the kind of people who have no concept of kindness, they will get upset if you dish out similar treatment to them. They can generally not face up to people who show them the mirror.
Everyone is going through or has gone through not-so-great times and being sympathetic and empathetic to each other becomes important. We need to help each other in difficult times. You don’t have to do anything, your just being there and lending your ear is also sufficient. This also constitutes being kind. Some people give huge donations to various NGO’s or organizations and think that they are spreading kindness. This is not true, it is more important that you spend time with people in need, who need not be someone you don’t know. Your friends or family might need your help or just your support, give it to them. Not everything can be bought with money so donating money is not the way to show kindness. We try to quantify everything and assume that all problems can be solved with money. That is most definitely not true.
Kindness is a simple concept, yet so very impactful. It can make the world a better place by ending suffering at the hands of war, hunger, human rights violation and injustice. Has the power to drastically improve our well-being as well as that of our families, friends, acquaintances and strangers too. It is something that should be a part of who we are and don’t need to think or do anything special about it. Kindness is the most basic of our instincts and we are all born with it, some of us just suppress it so as not to seem weak.
Just let yourself. Show kindness and make the world a better place for everyone.
Shalini
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