The Quality of Kindness

In the observations of an eminent industrialist we find some comments on the quality of kindliness: “Next I think I would choose kindness in its widest sense. Not, please not, either the hail-fellow-well-met or the do-gooding that too often goes by in the name of kindness, but in its real and true sense of active love for one’s fellow men, the sort of kindness that contains within itself generosity of mind and spirit, courtesy and good temper.”

This suggests some simple lines by an author whose name we do not know:

“I have wept in the night

For the shortness of sight

That to somebody’s need made me blind;

But I never have yet

Felt a tinge of regret

For being a little too kind.”

Everything that is accomplished in life, personally and professionally, publicly and privately, is affected by personal qualities of character, including the quality of kindliness. Discipline is essential at times; facts must be faced. But how things are done is often equally important with what is done. How things are said is often equally important with what is said. A comment can be critical and kind or critical and unkind⎯constructive or destructive.

Life has its problems for all, its days of discouragement, its sorrows, its difficulties and disappointments; but much bitterness and heartbreak can be softened by the quality of kindliness, which includes cruel or cutting sarcasm, ridicule, and every intent to embarrass, to insult, to degrade.

Kindness should be cultivated in all relationships of life: between parents and children; brothers and sisters; teachers and students; neighbor to neighbor; and every man to every other. The quality of kindliness is in part the essence of the message of the Master of mankind, with love and peace and respect for people.

“O the kind words we shall give in memory live

And sunshine forever impart;

Let us oft speak kind words to each other;

Kind words are sweet tones of the heart.”