Kindness

Continued from...What Do You Value?...

http://gforce-guru.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-do-you-value.html

A friend responded to my article on "What Do You Value?" indicating what was thought to be important. Then I replied: "If you are “sincere”, why don’t you have “empathy” and “honestly” give me some strokes with “open-mindedness”? “Forgive” me for asking but you need to show “kindness” and “fairness’ to be a “principled” person. Have the “courage” to discharge “justice” and I will be “grateful”! This way, you will begin to “appreciate beauty and excellence” and develop a healthy “curiosity” and “spirituality” to understand why I have this “energy” to “humour” you. Thank you for your “perseverance” in my “creativity” and when paying me after giving strokes please exercise “self-control”.

Now, let's talk about kindness. Kindness is a state of act of being kind and this is always marked with a charitable or good and pleasant disposition. Kindness is a great virtue that is recognised in all great religions and cultures.

Kindness is also simply helpfulness towards some one in need without expecting anything in return and where there is no advantage gained in helping a person nor placing in that person a favour to return you.

If you throw away all things, all you really need is love and kindness. If you knew about the seven deadly sins, then do you know about the seven great virtues of life where kindness is one of them? In the Bible love is described as "patient and kind". The Dalai Lama spoke of kindness too.

Kindness is usually associated with yellow daisies. Giving yellow daisies represent kindness and you are supposed to pass it on.

Have you ever been touched by kindness? Real kindness is powerful and changes people. Can one love without kindness? Or be kind without love? While it is nice to be important, it is more important to be nice. Showing kindness is like throwing a pebble into a pond and after you have thrown that pebble of kindness no matter how small, there will be a ripple effect even after you have gone. One yellow daisy fore everyone and then you pass it on.

We should treat everyone with politeness even to those who are rude to you. Not because they are nice but you are. If all the world's army is one of kindness, we'll be outdoing each other with great and kind deeds. Compassion and kindness are the things that will make people happy and it will also make you happy. Never miss an opportuity to make someone happy even if you have to leave him alone to do it. Do not wait for people to be friendly, just show them how. We will always admire clever people but it is easier to be clever than to be kind. If only an act of kindness is like a stalk of daisy and the ripple effects are multiplied by its petals then the world will immediately be a kinder place.

"A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not marbles." - Charles H. Spurgeon.

"Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day". - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"A person who does things that count, doesn't usually stop to count them." - Albeert Einstein.

"Kindness is a language where even the deaf can hear and the blind can see". - Mark Twain.

"Today I bent the truth to be kind and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true." - Robert Brault.

"If you have no charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble". - Bob Hope.

"I always believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble." - Rydyard Kipling.

"Never look down on anybody unless you are helping him up." - Jesse Jackson.

"Don't be yourself, be someone a little nicer." - Mignon McLaughlin.

"Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness". - Seneca.

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life, you will have been all of these." - George Washington Carver.

"You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." - John Wooden.

"The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love". - William Woodsworth.

"You cannot do kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late." - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I tilted this daisy to look like a shower so you can imagine what would happen when everyone is showered with kindness each day.  

Once, we participated in this kindness project. We walked several kilometres and passed on a stalk of yellow daisy to everyone we stranger we met that morning, from the young to the old, the busy person or someone seated alone, even the foreign worker and road sweeper. Nobody rejected and all greeted us with a smile.

Another time, I was hiking at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve with my son and we conducted an experiment. We will say good morning to everyone we meet and test their reactions. Of course, there might be one who may say to you: "So what is so good about the morning?" But it never happened. Nine out of ten greeted us back, some with a big smile, others with a surprise look. Let me share with you an old article I have written on compassion and kindness.

http://gforce-guru.blogspot.com/2008/11/inner-peace-3-return-of-jaded.html

Help kindness bloom! Beginning with you and me. Don't wait till 13 November. Do it now! Immediately after you read this, exercise that power! Then let the ripple effect kick in. Remember it begins with you and what goes around comes around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWs1-NEV9O0