Looking with kindness

Recently I was asked to look at something with kindness. Usually we look at things we like with kindness. A picture of the office pet was liked and shared more than a 1.000 times on LinkedIn. A pretty flower or a happy child makes us smile. People are looking for kindness. It seems that the world we live and work is quite harsh. But is this really true? I was wondering if I could think of something that I found ugly with kindness. I thought I would start simple. I find the heating radiator in my office ugly.  I thought about how grateful I am that it keeps me warm on a cold and snowy day. It made me smile. Then I thought of something that was more complicated. An angry man I ran into this morning. Initially I was disturbed by the way he reacted. Then I softened and thought: maybe he has had a difficult morning or someone was angry at him. Why should I be angry at him? Was there anything that was endangering me that very moment? Not really… I noticed I smiled. A stain on my trousers… why should I worry about that? It is just a stain… I can change my trousers, or clean them if I am already under way. So many people worry about things they don’t really have to worry about. If you look with kindness at the tigers that seem to be on your road, you may discover they are not really there… you may break into a smile at just that!

Robi
Tuesday, 22 January 2019