There doesn't have to be a reason to bestow kindness to a total stranger. We do not demand it of ourselves nor of our loved ones toward a neighbor, a friend, least or none at all from within our families.
A couple with two young children stopped by a diner at a rest stop. The young waitress who was serving them was noticeably just a few months before giving birth to a child. She smiled as she was making her rounds at the few tables she was assigned to but clearly she did not have an easy time doing it, let alone carrying out her chore. The couple, specially the wife, cannot help but notice.
When the family finished with their meal and about ready to go, the wife and husband looked at each other not saying a word but their eyes said a lot which only the two of them understood. The husband looked at the check, took out some cash and put them on top of the bill and stood to go to the restroom, and said that they will all meet up at the restaurant's lobby.
The waitress barely saw the backs of the family as they exited the main door. On top of the check was cash twice the amount of the bill and a folded paper napkin that held more extra cash and a note written by the wife that said, "Bless you and the baby, take care". There was no stopping the tears as time seemed to have stood still as she looked out to see which of several cars the family was in that were lining out to get back to the freeway. Their paths will never cross again; that intersection may be forever erased but it was enough to cause an unimaginable cascade of many other happenstance to occur somewhere else, even in other parts of the world.
The waitress was home that evening resting her aching feet when there was a knock at the apartment door. Outside was a couple with two paper bags. The waitress hesitated after staring at the peep hole. She slowly opened the door. No words were spoken before tears from all three started flowing in unison. The first words spoken were those from the older woman, her lips quivering, "We brought some groceries and there are more stuff in the car for the baby, and a crib, in case you still don't want to come home with us".
The waitress now crying and sobbing uncontrollably replied, "Oh mom, I want to come home!"
The other couple earlier at the restaurant and their two daughters are now almost at their destination but still on the freeway. The two children in the back were very much asleep. The couple had been quiet the last several miles. They seemed to be reminiscing about the same thing.
Ten years earlier, the husband was laid off from work. He took a temporary menial job while his wife started working as a waitress, to help out with the family's financial needs, although she was four months expecting their first child. Driving home one day, from his job, the husband saw ahead a stopped car while a gentleman stood next to it fumbling with his cell phone. The husband asked to see if he could help. The gentleman said something about a bad back and unable to change a flat tire but he is not getting any signal at all. The husband offered to do it which the gentleman accepted. They were talking as the husband was changing the tire. The husband mentioned that he was a construction foreman months earlier before the mass layoff. It so happened the older gentleman was looking for a construction supervisor, located at the next big town.
Now, the husband is half owner of the now expanded construction company which he and the older gentleman both co-owned. The older gentleman did not have children of his own. He considered the couple's two daughters like his own grand children. And he made one promise. When he retires the husband may buy the gentleman's half at the original value when they started the company. He said, "Don't ask because I don't have a reason. There doesn't have to be a reason."
That episode is of course just half of the world we live in. It would seem these days that there is kindness to go around but also an equal dose of people doing unkind acts to others. Unselfish kindness matched by extreme cruelty occur as if only to exact an unexplainable equilibrium on the balance scale.
Here is something to think about. The metaphor here will be quick and the reader does not have to spend much time to understand it except to consider the point that will be made from it. The much accepted scientific explanation of the origin of the universe, but not meant to cause any prejudice on the reader's own spiritual inclination, is the now famous big bang event. Right at the moment of creation - the big bang, so to speak, or the rapid expansion of pure energy - particles and anti-particles were generated simultaneously. When particles and anti-particles collide, or matter and anti-matter, as it were, they totally annihilate each other. But there was one significant quirk. For every one million anti-particles, there were one million and one regular particles. Had there been an equal number of anti-particles and particles then they will all only have cancelled each other out into nothingness. It just happened that one particle per million survived and taken together all the surviving particles are what we see today as the universe we know. Like I said, it is the current acceptable theory borne out by complicated equations and lab experiments on particle and anti-particle collisions. There is more to this, of course, but we leave them to the academics to pursue or debate over.
Meanwhile, we come to where the metaphor leads us.
It would appear, or at least we would like to believe, that the balance scale is tilted just a wee bit, so that for every million unkind things man had learned to do to others there are a million and a few more, much more acts of kindness in the world. It has to be so because to believe otherwise, would only mean that civilization would not have continued to develop and flourish; or, it would have ended a long time ago.
The world is what it is; however, we do not have a monopoly to kindness. You Tube videos and National Geographic and the science channels have conclusively shown us a semblance of kindness among animals. A lioness was shown protecting a calf wildebeest from other lionesses; a herd of hippos saved a zebra from crocodiles; a chimpanzee treating a kitten like its pet; well documented incidents of dolphins saving distressed humans at sea; extraordinary parenting by many species, and so on and on in the animal kingdom. This is not an attempt at romanticizing animal behavior but rather expounding on the natural occurrences of kindness in so many species and cross-species interactions as to define such behaviors as natural.
The huge difference is that in the animal world there is total absence of malice. Left alone their eco-system is managed without prejudice and, I must repeat, without malice.
We cannot be too hard on ourselves when all is said and debated over because the one attribute that no other living things have is that we have the capability to yearn and often act on those yearnings. We yearn to do good to others and above all to do it in many instances with great sacrifice. That alone proves to go against the natural instincts of survival and mere self preservation.
Acts of kindness had overwhelmingly come to be the universally preferred trait over unkind behavior. Courage and valor had triumphed over cruelty and bad behavior. Proof? History is our witness and record keeper. Name one despot, dictator, ideological subjugators and conquerors that lasted even for just a few generations. Of course, pages of history are filled with chronicles of man's inhumanity but there are just more than enough pages of kindness to get us to the present, to see civilization's continued progress toward the universal yearning to be kind to one another. Our continued existence depends on that.
There doesn't have to be a reason to exercise that trait. The milk of human kindness is what had sustained us so far. The biggest surprise is that more often than not, it does not cost much at all. That extra tip to the waiter or waitress, helping others whom you have never met before or will ever see again, a Christmas gift to the mailman, a little bonus to the person who cuts your grass, etc. are such a small price to pay for a gallon of kindness. Those among us who do the extraordinary, or whose acts of kindness were achieved at great sacrifice, or those who paid the ultimate price for others are those among us who prove that the yearning to do such goodness must be enough to show the existence of the human soul.
We are told that we can't know that for sure but why do we have to bet against it. And there doesn't have to be a reason to bestow any form of kindness in this life without regard to whether there is or isn't an afterlife.
That episode is of course just half of the world we live in. It would seem these days that there is kindness to go around but also an equal dose of people doing unkind acts to others. Unselfish kindness matched by extreme cruelty occur as if only to exact an unexplainable equilibrium on the balance scale.
Here is something to think about. The metaphor here will be quick and the reader does not have to spend much time to understand it except to consider the point that will be made from it. The much accepted scientific explanation of the origin of the universe, but not meant to cause any prejudice on the reader's own spiritual inclination, is the now famous big bang event. Right at the moment of creation - the big bang, so to speak, or the rapid expansion of pure energy - particles and anti-particles were generated simultaneously. When particles and anti-particles collide, or matter and anti-matter, as it were, they totally annihilate each other. But there was one significant quirk. For every one million anti-particles, there were one million and one regular particles. Had there been an equal number of anti-particles and particles then they will all only have cancelled each other out into nothingness. It just happened that one particle per million survived and taken together all the surviving particles are what we see today as the universe we know. Like I said, it is the current acceptable theory borne out by complicated equations and lab experiments on particle and anti-particle collisions. There is more to this, of course, but we leave them to the academics to pursue or debate over.
Meanwhile, we come to where the metaphor leads us.
It would appear, or at least we would like to believe, that the balance scale is tilted just a wee bit, so that for every million unkind things man had learned to do to others there are a million and a few more, much more acts of kindness in the world. It has to be so because to believe otherwise, would only mean that civilization would not have continued to develop and flourish; or, it would have ended a long time ago.
The world is what it is; however, we do not have a monopoly to kindness. You Tube videos and National Geographic and the science channels have conclusively shown us a semblance of kindness among animals. A lioness was shown protecting a calf wildebeest from other lionesses; a herd of hippos saved a zebra from crocodiles; a chimpanzee treating a kitten like its pet; well documented incidents of dolphins saving distressed humans at sea; extraordinary parenting by many species, and so on and on in the animal kingdom. This is not an attempt at romanticizing animal behavior but rather expounding on the natural occurrences of kindness in so many species and cross-species interactions as to define such behaviors as natural.
The huge difference is that in the animal world there is total absence of malice. Left alone their eco-system is managed without prejudice and, I must repeat, without malice.
We cannot be too hard on ourselves when all is said and debated over because the one attribute that no other living things have is that we have the capability to yearn and often act on those yearnings. We yearn to do good to others and above all to do it in many instances with great sacrifice. That alone proves to go against the natural instincts of survival and mere self preservation.
Acts of kindness had overwhelmingly come to be the universally preferred trait over unkind behavior. Courage and valor had triumphed over cruelty and bad behavior. Proof? History is our witness and record keeper. Name one despot, dictator, ideological subjugators and conquerors that lasted even for just a few generations. Of course, pages of history are filled with chronicles of man's inhumanity but there are just more than enough pages of kindness to get us to the present, to see civilization's continued progress toward the universal yearning to be kind to one another. Our continued existence depends on that.
There doesn't have to be a reason to exercise that trait. The milk of human kindness is what had sustained us so far. The biggest surprise is that more often than not, it does not cost much at all. That extra tip to the waiter or waitress, helping others whom you have never met before or will ever see again, a Christmas gift to the mailman, a little bonus to the person who cuts your grass, etc. are such a small price to pay for a gallon of kindness. Those among us who do the extraordinary, or whose acts of kindness were achieved at great sacrifice, or those who paid the ultimate price for others are those among us who prove that the yearning to do such goodness must be enough to show the existence of the human soul.
We are told that we can't know that for sure but why do we have to bet against it. And there doesn't have to be a reason to bestow any form of kindness in this life without regard to whether there is or isn't an afterlife.
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