Kindness – the quality of being gentle, caring and helpful

This is a post to make you think, all of the questions are rhetorical, but I would love to hear your opinions.

Since living here, as some of you may know, we have experienced many people who have turned out to be (how shall I say it given the topic?) not very nice. They have taken advantage of any kindness we have shown them, any empathy that we have felt and, given their nature, most often than not totally abused our conscientiousness. In fact as I have researched this post I have struggled to find a quote that I can use for kindness.

So it makes me wonder if the bastards are starting to beat me!

Over the past few months or so I have been thinking often if there are there times when we can be too kind? I believe that all things are lessons in life and that because I am naturally kind life is trying to tell me that I need to protect myself sometimes and not always give people the benefit of the doubt; it has made me wonder – When do we stop being kind?

I have often had it said to me that people mistake my kindness for a weakness. Is that them? Or is it me?

I think that it may well be them and that their need and to feel superior, and to use people and abuse their kindness is because they are ultimately insecure in themselves or in their lives.

So this brings me onto Empathy.

As some of you may know I had an incredibly stressful job back in the UK. My job was with the NHS, the National Health Service, and main provider of health in the UK. The main part of my role was to oversee all of the feedback that came into the organisations that I worked for and to improve service from that feedback. But ultimately it was to deal with complaints and concerns that came into the organisations.

Now I have a strong sense of empathy, I cry when I see other’s predicaments, my heart goes out to people and I have always, from a young age, been able to see that ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’ But there is a problem with having a strong sense of empathy and that is that other’s can abuse that, and eventually transfer their problem on to you and believe that you are the one either responsible for it, or solely responsible for sorting it out. Had I known then what I know now perhaps I would not have had a breakdown….

You may have guessed that I have mulled this question over a lot over the last month, and considered life’s message and this is my conclusion:

Yes, you can be too kind. But.. I believe that you should be kind first and then see the reaction and consider it and if the other person is not kind to you don’t continue to be kind, but importantly don’t be unkind either, just step away.

More importantly always you consider yourself when being kind, do not do it to the detriment of yourself.

With regard to empathy – Yes I totally believe that you can have too much empathy. But I don’t want to lose that ability, I don’t want to be sucked into the dark side, so I have come to the conclusion that sometimes I need to reign myself in. I cannot give my all and I should not try.

With regard to conscientiousness that is easy for me, I will always be conscientious to others, because that is my prinicple, do unto others as they would do unto you. But that is a double edged sword because what do you do when they do bad things to you?! For me I will not necessarily do them back (again I don’t want to be sucked into the darkness) but I will step away. I don’t need that shit in my life anymore!

So everyone what do you think? Is there such a thing as being too kind, and what happens if we all stop being kind just because of the ‘Haters’?

Here’s what Mother Theresa had to say, and I think she is right….

I love giving you something to think about at the weekend!!

Moisy