What’s it like, being kind?
Is helping someone without an apparent benefit to your person enough to justify itself as an act of kindness? I don’t know. Some people genuinely like to help. Others do it as atonement for past or present sins. Or to impress someone, be it a potential future mate or a potential future employer. For the ones at the receiving end I guess it doesn’t matter much, as long as they get help. For them the kindness is the act.
But what does make a person kind? There’s got to be selflessness involved, that I know. Kind people don’t help for their own benefit; they do it because they can’t afford not to. If they abstain from helping they deny their own nature, so helping others is probably as natural to them as breathing. It’s something you are, not something you do.
But being kind does not necessarily mean walking about with huge bewildered eyes, looking for kittens in distress. Kindness does not equal empathy or compassion. On the contrary, I’m guessing even a slap in the face may be construed as an act of kindness, if it’s done at the right time and with the right attitude in mind.
I have a small scenario in mind. Imagine that you have a friend who is in terrible pain. He is clearly out of his wits with suffering, literally writhing on the floor teary-eyed, begging you to just make it stop, please, make it go away. You’re standing there, looking at him, and seeing him in this state breaks your heart. He looks at you, and you realise that you hold in your hand a solution to his problem, and with a simple gesture you can make his pain go away. Yet you’re witholding it from him – you shake your head, and you watch him suffer. Is that an act of kindness?
And what if I told you that your hand holds a dose of heroin?
“You can’t always get what you want… but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need.”
– Mick Jagger