So I’ve been collecting quotes about kindness and compassion. (There are a lot of them! Stay tuned for a great list in a future post.) I’ve gone from collecting quotes to reading more in depth advice on how to add compassion and happiness to life. I am learning that kindness is something that we need to practice in order to be really good at it. Practicing kindness requires us to be kind to everyone we meet, even if we’re really not feeling it.
It doesn’t cost anything to be kind. Zig Ziglar said “When you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.” Smiles are free! I saw a chalkboard in front of a store that read “We don’t have to agree on anything to be kind to each other.” I wish more people could take that message to heart. We can disagree and still be kind. We don’t have to rush in to argue or point out how someone is wrong. Sometimes the people who need our kindness the most are the ones who are the least kind to begin with.
There is a translation from “The Lion and the Mouse” by Aesop that says, “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” We never know what someone else is going through. Our kindness, even if it doesn’t seem deserved, can make a huge difference in someone’s life.
We also need to practice kindness to ourselves. What we usually see in the world is everyone else’s best face. Our photos have been edited. Our posts are all about the best things we do/see/have/eat. Social media tends to share only the richest, the prettiest, the thinnest, and the smartest. We compare our regular selves to everyone else’s edited for consumption selves. In fact, I think if we can’t be truly kind to ourselves, it makes it much harder to be truly kind to other people.
For a more scientific analysis of this subject, check out this video called the “Kindness Scientist.” He’s a professor at U.C. Berkeley who studies compassion. and it’s effects on people and society.
I like how the scientific and the spiritual go hand in hand. The Dalai Lama teaches: “The most important problem our world faces is a lack of compassion. Compassion is a prerequisite for building a happy individual, a happy society.” He also said, “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” Proverbs 16:24 says: “Kind words are like honey, sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.” And LDS church leader, Dieter F. Uchtdorf reminds us that “by becoming the answer to someone’s prayer, we often find the answers to our own.
So please practice kindness. And if you have any great quotes on kindness to share, I’d love to hear them. Feel free to share my blog too!
