K is for Kindness.

Kindness is simply the most important virtue there is today …for me.

The world around me is in rapid motion.  A world where.. we adults run busy lives, eyes  glued to screens, multitasking aggressively, not even a moment to stop,  where fun and enjoyment means going overboard and losing oneself in food or drink or such excesses, a world where we are connected to a thousand friends but have not gone over to chat individually with even one. Kids are been raised under severe pressures as if  lifelong doom awaits if they do not succeed. Under the guise of holistic development..now the poor kid has to perform not only academically , but also excel at a sport, play an instrument and even speak a foreign language or two!!

We are busy airing our opinions on everything (just like my rant on this post ) on social media thanks to the digital age. Do we stop to consider the effects of our words and action on the others?

Cyber bullying is proof that kindness is the need of the hour… have we stooped so low, that we hide behind a screen and attack now?

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is kindness and empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.”

Hence my resolve  ” to be a little kinder than necessary“as Professor Tushman  says, in  one of my recent  favourites, Wonder. (a must read)

I leave you with a short tale and a favourite quote to mull on..

In China, there was a prince who showed his kindness by setting doves free.  Once a year, the air was filled with beating wings.  But a tear shone on the cheek of his bride, and the prince asked her why.”Dearest,” she said, “the doves are freed because they are caught, and they are caught for you to set them free.  But in the nets, wings and necks are broken.  Many doves die. So the prince truly understood Kindness and ruled that doves were never more to be captured in his land.  Every year they came freely, in splendour of beating wings, to coo in peace upon the palace roof. (Source : Animalia by Barbara Berger)

“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Gandalf the Gray in The Hobbit