Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Introduction
I wanted to write this blog post today because there is this misconception that kindness is a weakness. Growing up I was always told that I was too nice and that it was a bad thing. I was told that when people were rude to me I too should be rude back. But I disagree with this approach.
“I know that my kindness hurts me,
Najwa Zebian
but I will continue to choose it,
not because I’m naive
but because my actions define me“
I think there is a great deal of strength that kind people possess. To constantly be kind in a world that constantly puts you down takes a huge amount of courage and resilience. To be able to endure the pain and suffering that growing up in this word naturally evokes and still be kind should be something people should be able to recognise and admire about themselves. It is so easy to fall into the trap of counteracting other peoples negativity with your own. It is a lot harder to maintain composure in tough situations and still act with kindness. Personally, I think kindness is an extremely underrated and overlooked strength.
Before I continue …
Before I write anymore I want to make a few things clear. The first thing is that when I speak of kindness I am not speaking of people pleasing. Personally I don’t consider people pleasing to be an act of kindness because even though you may be being nice to others you are not showing the same level of respect to yourself. I used to people please a lot when I was younger and the main reason why was because I was too scared to say no. But my experience with people pleasing can be written in another blog, for now I just want to make it clear that when I speak of kindness it is not in the form of people pleasing.
The last thing I want to say is that although I believe kindness is a great strength, there are some situations in life where it’s okay to get angry. We are only human and sometimes we are put in situations that kindness alone cannot resolve. With that being said I hope that you enjoy the rest of this post.
Why being kind is todays greatest strength
Not allowing other people’s negativity to cloud your judgement takes a lot of strength. It is a lot easier to allow anger to take over certain areas of your life. It is much harder to maintain kindness when your in situations with people who don’t reciprocate it. Kindness is a strength. As long as we view it as a weakness it will be something that this world constantly lacks. And I think everyone can agree that kindness is needed more than ever in todays world.
We live in a day and age where impatience and stress has taken a hold of peoples lives. But it is our own responsibility to manage our own stress so that we are not projecting our anger onto other people.
The medias impact
I also think that we are introduced to too much negativity via the media. A lot of the time the ‘positive’ side of the media is about random things that don’t showcase the beauty of humanity. One thing that I have realised is that we don’t consume the media, the media consumes us. The more we are exposed to negative content, the more susceptible we are to developing negative mindsets. And when we are trapped in a negative mindset it is really hard to see the good in the world. And when we internalise a lot of negativity we project it outwards onto others.
I don’t think rude people are bad people. I think they’re people who have been hurt so much that they’ve become too strong and tough. They no longer see the good in other. And they no longer see the pain that others face. The biggest strength that kind people possess is the ability to be vulnerable. A lot of the time we fear vulnerability because we too associate that with weakness, but it takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable.
Kindness takes courage
Another thing I wanted to talk about is the fear of showing act of kindness. This is something that I personally experienced when I was younger. When out in public and somebody needs help, its really rare that somebody will take the time to acknowledge the person in need of help and actually help them. A lot of people just ignore them. I am 19 and see people ignoring others all the time. If we grow up in environments that promote this behaviour we end up developing the same attitude of just ignoring people who need help. It took me a long time to find the confidence and courage to not care what others think and do what I thought was right.
However, I do understand why people are this way. The world that we live in lacks many things but one of the most important things is trust. When people need help we sometimes don’t trust their motives. And I think that is reasonable but we shouldn’t allow this to prevent us from being kind.
Not every action needs a reaction
Another thing I wanted to touch upon in this Blog is reactions. Many of you will have probably heard of the phrase ‘Not every action needs a reaction’. I use this phrase because I feel like a lot of the time when something goes wrong the first emotion that arises in people is anger or frustration. And when these emotions make themselves known it makes the situation a whole lot worse. A good example is when somebody gets your order wrong. I totally understand how frustrating this is, but I have seen people get really angry and start shouting at the staff. Not only does this make the situation worse, but it ruins everyone’s day. Even those who are watching.
I think that negativity is more infectious than positivity. When something good happens to us it makes our day but then when something bad happens on the same day, we forget about all of the good. So we should be more conscious of how we react and try to be more patient and understanding in our response.
Conclusion
I hope you guys enjoyed this weeks blog post on why I think Kindness is a strength. This was just my insight on this particuar topic and would love to hear your ideas and opinions. I am always trying to promote critical thinking and want people to be comfortable voicing their own opinions. So feel free to comment them down below!
Have a great day 🙂