KIND WORDS
Be Kind Unconditionally The author wishes to remain anonymous
Edited by Shmuel Greenbaum
Printed with Permission of
Recently I was involved in trying to give emotional support and encouragement to an elderly lady. Her attitude towards life was very negative and she was very unappreciative of any help given her. I felt disinclined to continue my phone calls to her. I shared my frustration with a friend, who knows the lady I was trying to help. She told me that she had discussed this matter with a wise woman who told her that I should continue to help people and not feel discouraged. She explained that, "some people have so many problems that any help is like a drop in the ocean." ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Be Kind Unconditionally" From Kindness: Making a Difference in People's Lives: Formulas, stories, and insights By Zelig Pliskin Printed with Permission of Shaar Press Once you have done an act of kindness for another person, be grateful if the person is grateful. But don’t expect gratitude. Many people lack the ability to express gratitude. If you do your acts of kindness because you hope you will receive gratitude, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Some people are very hurt and feel resentful if they help another person and he isn’t grateful. When you do an act of kindness, do it wholeheartedly. Do it even if that person will never do anything at all for you. Do kindness unconditionally and you will never regret the good you have done. "True kindness" is the kindness you do for someone who is deceased. Attending his funeral and being involved in honoring him after his death is the truest level of kindness. Why? Because he will never do anything for you. He can’t even say, "Thank you," regardless of how difficult it was for you to attend his funeral. Since you are doing an act of respect which will not be reciprocated by this person, your act of kindness is more elevated. The authors students provided these stories: I used to have many angry quarrels. I would go out of my way to do many things for others, but I didn’t feel I was receiving enough gratitude. This would make me angry, and I would rebuke and censure relatives and friends for not being more grateful. I spoke to someone who advised me, "Take pleasure in the good you do. Let the knowledge that you are doing kind acts be its own reward." "This sounds too lofty for me," I argued. "I’m a regular human being and it bothers me when my efforts are not met with gratitude." "Forget about high spiritual levels right now," he said. "Do this out of intelligent self-interest. When you demand the gratitude you don’t spontaneously receive, you end up quarreling and everyone loses. By not demanding gratitude, you will end up with more gratitude than before. Please do me a favor and try it out." He was right. It worked. When others saw that my kindness came from my sincere caring and not as a means of obtaining gratitude, the actual gratitude increased immensely. But I was sincerely prepared to forgo gratitude, so I could only win and there was no way to lose. * * * Whenever I did something for someone, what was uppermost in my mind was, "I hope this person will do something for me in return. If he won’t, I should be doing this for someone who will." This attitude caused me much resentment. A friend of mine consistently did acts of kindness for people who weren’t likely to reciprocate. He told me, "When someone does something for another person with the hope that they will do something in return, he is never certain if he will get what he wants. When I joyfully do a kind act unconditionally, I am one hundred percent guaranteed to benefit from what I do. It makes sense to get a guarantee on one’s investment in time and energy."
---------------------------------------------------------------- Kind Words is a free weekly e-mail distributed by Partners In Kindness. The archive for Kind Words e-mails is located at: Although the content of these e-mails contains copyrighted material, Partners in Kindness allows users who register at our website to reprint them in print, on a website, or on an e-mail distribution list at no cost. If you have permission to reprint this e-mail, please ensure that you reprint the entire e-mail (including this notice). Names of people, places, and other details mentioned in these stories may have been changed to protect privacy. Kindness is like music, art, sports or any other discipline -- it can only be mastered with practice, training, and lots and lots of encouragement. That is what PartnersInKindness.org is trying to promote. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PartnersInKindness For further information, please visit our Website http://www.PartnersInKindness.org e-mail: info@... ----------------------------------------------------------------- To un-subscribe send a blank e-mail to: Kindness-unsubscribe@... To subscribe send a blank e-mail to: Kindness-subscribe@... |
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