“Kind” Doings

There are three types of kindness.

The first type of kindness is the one a person needs and asks for.

In this case, whether to give them kindness or not depends on two factors: the degree of compassion and the internal feeling of the rightness of giving. Sometimes it happens that you can help and it seems necessary, but inside you’re against helping. Because sometimes people need to learn their lessons, and sometimes if you give them some kindness, they won’t learn a thing.

And they’ll have to repeat the lesson unlearned. And if there are no internal feelings that this particular kindness shouldn’t be done to the person, then it depends on human compassion: a kind person will give (if they can), an unkind person will pass by. I mean that sometimes you have to pass by if you have a feeling of “no”. And this is not a lack of kindness and compassion.

The second type of kindness is the kindness that a person needs, but they don’t ask for, although they want someone to give it to them.

They may not ask for various reasons: pride; they don’t believe they’ll be given it; they want others to guess. People can be all sorts of ways in various conditions. Some will never ask for support or help, they’ll lie down to die rather than ask. But they need help, and they would very much (sometimes deep down, unconsciously) like someone to give them this kindness.

This is already for close people. No sick person who has trouble getting out of bed will refuse if someone fills their fridge with good food and makes chicken soup. Take care of them, basically. And a person who starts doing stupid things and drinking packs of Dimedrol during a hormonal crisis understands that they’re just being foolish and in three days they’ll regret what they did. Rinsing their stomach is a necessary kindness.

A person casually mentions something they need but can’t do themselves. For example, well, I don’t know, pick up a child from daycare. They don’t directly ask or hint, they just give you that information. Offering them such kindness is perfectly normal. And even great. Or buying something they’re looking for and definitely need.

The third type of kindness is the kindness that a person may or may not need, it’s unknown, but a person intentionally doesn’t ask for it.

Here the moment is quite complex, because sometimes it’s quite difficult to distinguish between Kindness number two and Kindness number three. But it’s necessary. Because if you give a person Kindness number three, it won’t only not please the person, but it will also anger them and may even cause a lot of inconvenience and even trouble.

This category includes acts of kindness that a person needs, but in a certain form that the giver of the “kindness” may not be aware of. I don’t need to go into examples for long: the relative of one woman decided (secretly) to remove a small spot from a beautiful and expensive dining table. As a result, she burned a huge part of its surface. The table had to be taken for restoration. The intentions were good? Yes. What came out of it? A disaster. It came out ugly. Much worse than kindness that concerns human life, feelings, experiences, awareness.

So someone is struggling with some internal problem, they need to get out of it, some completely unrelated person comes along, knowing nothing about this problem, and says something supposedly helpful that may help someone else in completely different conditions. And our hero is finally drowned. He goes and swallows twenty Dimedrol tablets. And hello. But they wanted to help. You have to think before spreading such kindness, find out first what and how, clarify all the details. And then inflict kindness.

So, my personal lesson: before doing a “kindness”, make sure it’s not kindness number three. And then it depends on the circumstances.