At Attitude of Kindness

"If you have the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind"

Doing a random act of kindness for someone is a noble, selfless, and admirable thing to do.  To do something nice for someone or have someone do something nice for you, with no strings attached, brings a good feeling.  I wish I did it more often.  It is a feeling of shelling out love and being loved.  We have a family that allows us to say with them Columbus when we are not staying with my parents.  When we first met them we were embarrassed by the way they showered us with dinner, tickets to football games, free babysitting for our children, you name it they wanted to do it for us.  The sooner we realized that they really wanted nothing in return and they just loved our company and wanted us to be comfortable, it became easier to accept.  We still want to pay them back in some way, but not because we feel obligated, but because we truly appreciate them.  What this family has is not just the willingness to act in kind ways.  That kindness is truly present in every fiber of their being.  The lady, who acts as a second mom to me, always says that they are so “blessed” and to treat others with “grace.” What if we all had this attitude of Kindness? 

As we have had conversations in class around the idea of choosing to be kind, rather than right, I have been thinking about the world we live in and how we are all so quick to judge and not offer people grace.  Twitter and other forms of social media can be a breeding ground for this kind of judgment.  So often we something in the news, on social media, while we are out driving, or in the form of gossip.  I would like to think that my first reaction to these pieces of news would always be to take a step back, try to put myself in their shoes and give everyone involved the benefit of the doubt.  I do not always do that, however.  It is so easy to take sides and get so locked into one viewpoint that we are blinded by the truth.  There has been one national event this summer that has brought this to light, one being the news coming out of the Ohio State football program.  I will not comment in detail about the events, as the facts are still truly being gathered, but there have been some awful things stated about people on each side of the argument.  Families and children have been drug through the mud for the sake of people prove they were “right.”  It is so easy for the mob mentality to take over.  


I think this also applies to the discussions we have in the company of others, whether it is in the student lunchroom or the teacher workroom.   We cannot simply do nice things for other people every once in a while and call it kindness.  It has to move into an intentional outpouring of grace for other human beings in thought and deed. We must measure our words carefully.  I once heard a colleague ask a student if what they said was necessary and kind. These are questions we should all ask ourselves on a daily basis.  Is what I am about to say necessary, and is it kind?  Sometimes, we need to saying something to someone or coach them about their behavior.  We might even disagree with them.  However, let’s choose kindness and grace.  It is certainly better than the alternative.  We don’t always know what others are facing.