A Kindness

Greetings everybody,

I hope you had a pleasant weekend.  I got out and about.  This weekend is the second time I participated in a local festival called the Mighty Kindness Hoot.  It is an artistic festival centered around kindness.  It's just a one day even and both times I have really enjoyed being a part of it.

On such special occasions I have to break out my horns.  Walking around the fair I got to feel the energy of the event quite viscerally.  It felt pretty good.  I've been to my fair share of holistic, healing, and psychic fairs.  This had some elements of those but also elements of a street fair, a wellness fair, an art fair, a local business fair, and an social cause event.   Now people often confuse being nice with being kind.  I have worried of late that I am more nice than I am kind.  I see that as a problem.  Nice is a behavior, usually one that is self serving or manipulative.  In my mind it doesn't come from a clean place, but one of calculation and strategy.  Kindness comes from the heart, it is more innate and more pure.  It comes from the desire to do good for another simply to do good, not for the hope that it will put you in a good position later.

Are you still fuzzy on the difference?  Well it is a significant one.  The easiest way is to give you an example.  If I were to give a reading to someone where there is some unpleasant news to deliver if I am being nice I will try and sugar coat it, or make it sound like something it isn't.  If I am being kind I will give the person the information without trying to make it more palatable and then see if there is something that can be done to help them deal with the situation.  Nice is all about appearances and seeming pleasant.  Kind is all about service.  It is not great service to put on a fake smiley face and feed someone sweet delusions so they keep coming back for more.  Kindness is healing, nice is just covering up the symptoms.  Kindness is hard to do in certain circumstances, nice makes us feel like we are good even if we're not doing good.

Some people are just very kind by nature.  Now most of us start out that way, but somewhere along the road of life we've had it beaten out of us.  We armor ourselves against the hurst of the world and genuine kindness can be hard to come by.  As I said above I often worry that I am more nice than kind, so I try to ask the question, "What would be the kind thing to do?"  I ponder it for a moment, see what answer I get, and sometimes I even do it.

It is my hope that lost kindness can be relearned, because kindness is its own reward.  There is an ease in the kind heart that is not found in the false projections of the niceties.  Manners are all well and good, but intent is the key to all.  In this world of broken dreams and shattered promises it can be easy to overlook that the solutions to many of the world's problems are available to us.  The only thing stopping us is our ability to work together towards a common goal.  The lost art of getting along is more important now than ever.  In this time a little bit of kindness could go a long way to creating a brighter future.

So why am I telling you this?  Well take stock of yourself and be very honest.  Are you more kind or nice?  (You know you could be neither, but you probably wouldn't be reading this in that case).  Have you forgotten how to be kind effortlessly?  Is your heart light with joy and compassion or is close and calculating?  Look at your own motives, make sure you are aware of the energy that is moving you.  There is often a fear that if we allow ourselves the freedom to be kind that we will be taken advantage of by others.  There is that danger, but if you are aware of yourself and the spirit of Mighty Kindness you will often feel when others don't resonate with it.  You don't have to be blind to the evils of the world to choose to be kind.  Just keep your eyes open, all three of them, and remember most of all, be kind to yourself.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle