We Need Kindness

Nice is not enough

I was complaining about someone to a friend of mine the other day. His response was, “I don’t judge in that way. I just like people who are kind to me.”

Not exactly t-shirt material. My fallback has always been more along the lines of “People are Stupid, Get a Dog”.

We talked about it some more. He wasn’t talking about being nice. It was about being kind. Kind is different.

Playing nice means getting along. Avoiding pain. Telling people what they want to hear.

Kind, on the other hand, is something we do for someone with no expectations. Kind is authentic. It can even be confrontational. It’s most certainly honest.

Maybe it’s part of my sales training, but my tendency has been to try and quickly assess people. Too quickly? I’d sit in the airport, or at the doctor’s office and try to figure out what people are all about. I have a sense in my mind of who someone is before I properly meet them. But…, kindness doesn’t make judgements. Damn… another thing for me to work on.

The impact of being non-judgemental hit home when I came upon this video from Parkinson’s UK.

Would you judge these people? Would you ignore them, or would you ask, “Are you ok?”

(I have not experienced Parkinson’s “freezing”… yet. It is one of many common, but hidden, Parkinson’s issues. You may also notice the grumpy, or masked, facial expressions. I have been told I present this common Parkinson’s trait.)

Being kind isn’t always serious. I am fortunate to know a number of very kind people. With the “kind” guys I golf with, there is a good chance that if they are “nice” to you they either don’t like you or they feel sorry for you. It’s almost insulting to receive niceness on the golf course. Somehow I understand they do this through kindness.

Kind people are the best kind of people.

Be Kind.

Published

Originally published at https://shakeitupdotonline.wpcomstaging.com on January 4, 2020.