Sunday Morning XX

Be Kind to the Kind
Be Kind to the Unkind
Thus Kindness is achieved.

A popular American song spoke about this back in the 80's. The Coward of the County. I remember it well for, at first, I thought the fellow was going to succeed.

When townsfolk ridiculed him, he calmly walked away from the insults. Never retaliated.

I thought: WOW! Takes a powerfully strong-minded individual to accomplish that.

Too many times when I've felt insulted or ridiculed, I've lost my cool. Reacted. Hurled insults right back. In essence, I blew the kindness bit. It's a LOT easier to be kind to the kind, and kiss-off folks who are unkind.

Now who knows where we are going in life? Sometimes, we're happily tooling along, blithely doing our own thing, and some idiotic inner part of ourselves stops us cold and says: "Hey look feller, you have all the accoutrements of worldly success BUT you're mighty darn short in the "qualities" department. Them spiritual attributes that are supposed to get you through the pearly gates. You know the type. Kindness, compassion, sympathy, overcoming greed, envy, jealousy, pride and arrogance."

Listening to that inner voice can get you into a whole mess of difficulties just like it did that feller in Kenny Roger's song cause unless you wear a sign on your back or one of them there slogan t-shirts that are popular enough to get you kicked out of the White House State of the Union address, proclaiming: Kindness is my gig so don't mess with me . . . well . . . folks will think you're a coward and like many ordinary, ignorant human beings, they'll really pile the jam thick on the bread slice and give you an extra helping of verbal abuse. Sometimes, twice in the same meal. They think you're weak, see.

That's why I admired that feller in the song so much. He had a good handle on humanity's base nature and was strong enough to shrug his shoulders, allow others to wallow in their petty foibles, and walk away from it all.

Yep. This feller owned kindness.

Well, he did for a while, anyways. Songwriter Roger Bowling copped out on us and let the feller let himself down at the end of the song by giving in to that other part of ourselves that demands retaliation as a method of fixing bad situations.

Retaliation is a short term method of releasing anger but it never does fix the problem nor undo any previous wrongs. Just gives the illusion of having done something about a hurtful situation.

Who knows, maybe it's better to traipse blithely through life, self-satisfied with worldly success. But, perchance, if you do listen to that inner voice and decide to earn a quality you can brag about to St. Peter, try to pick an easy one like giving up greed or jealousy.

Cause being kind to the unkind tends to prick the pride and, most often, foils altruism.

Unless, of course, you've got a really strong grip on the handle of that song's verse: It doesn't mean you're weak if you turn the other cheek, have learned the art of diplomacy, and have a mighty-fine, after-the-war peace strategy firmly in place in case you blow it.
Chae