Man is no doubt very weak. He can only be passive in a thunderstorm or run in an earthquake. The odds are against him when he is managing his ship in a hurricane or when pestilence is raging in the house where he lives. Heat and cold, drought and rain are his masters. He is weaker than an elephant, and subordinate to the east wind. This is all very true. Nevertheless man has considerable powers, considerable enough to leave him, as proprietor of this planet, in possession of at least as much comfortable jurisdiction as most landed proprietors have in a free country. He has one power in particular, which is not sufficiently dwelt on, and with which we will at present occupy ourselves. It is the power of making the world happy, or at least of so greatly diminishing the amount of unhappiness in it, as to make it a quite different world than it is at present. This power is called kindness.
The worst kinds of unhappiness, as well as the greatest amount of it, come from our conduct to each other. If our conduct therefore were under the control of kindness, it would be nearly the opposite of what it is, and so the state of the world would be almost reversed.
Kindness is the overflowing of self upon others. We put others in the place of self. We treat them as we should wish to be treated ourselves. Kindness is the coming to the rescue of others when they need it, when it is in our power to supply what they need.
Let us consider the office of kindness in the world in order that we may get a clearer idea of it. It makes life more endurable...There are many men to whom life is always approaching the unbearable. It stops just short of it.
It is true that we make ourselves more unhappy than other people make us. [More often than not, it is our thoughts that do us in, rather than the objective circumstances. As Joel Osteen remarks: “Our thoughts affect our emotions. We feel exactly the way we think…Your circumstances don’t have you down. Your thoughts about your circumstances have you down…Make a choice to keep your mind focused on the higher things…Fortunately, we can dig a new river, one going in a positive direction. The way we do so is one thought at a time.”
– [Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps To Living At Your Full Potential” ]
Kindness Aids Those Failing In Purpose
There are some men whose practical talents are completely swamped by the keenness of their sense of injustice. They go through life as failures, because of the pressure of injustice upon themselves, or the sight of its pressing upon others has unmanned them …They had much in them; but they have died without anything having come from them. [Perhaps more realistically, not as much as they would have hoped for.] Kindness steps forward to remedy this evil. Each solitary kind action that is done, the whole world over, is working briskly in its own sphere to restore the balance between right and wrong to correct itself and remain in equilibrium...Kindness allies itself with the right, to invade the wrong and to beat it off the earth...
Kindness, Character and Undeveloped Nobility
What does kindness do for those to whom we show it? The great consequence, is the immense power of kindness in bringing out the good points of the character of others. Almost all men have more good in them than the ordinary intercourse of the world enables us to discover. Most men, from glimpses we now and then obtain, carry with them to the grave much undeveloped nobility.
Life is seldom so varied or so adventurous as to enable a man to unfold all that is in him. But we can try to liberate all the potential for kindness that resides inside us. [It’s an energizing thought to know that we have so much inside us to give, waiting to be developed, if we can only use the key of kindness to help us become what we’re capable of becoming. As Samuel Smiles said in his classic 1859 book Self Help: “Character is power, more than knowledge is power.”]...