Is Kindness A Thing?

Judge slow, love quick

Two days ago was Election Day, which means yesterday we woke up with a new president, this is either a big thing to people or not. I pray that before people decide to do something rash though they will take a step back and realize once the decision is made it most likely will not be undone. This is not a post about politics though, I personally don’t put too much time and effort into thinking about the subject probably because it is a subject that is talked about too much as it is. So whether your person wins or loses I think we as a nation should stop getting our panties in a bundle, instead we should look at the bigger picture and see our country needs more kindness and humility and yes even love. We have made hate ordinary. We are quick to see the differences in people and instead of embracing them we judge them. We have lost our ability to communicate with people. We may enter into discussions with others but once they start to disagree with what we have to say we start to shut down. I don’t know about you but my views from five years ago are not the same as they are today, so how to we expect people to embrace what we have to say if your views can be so fickle?

A few months ago I did a blog called Oh To Be Like My Pets, in which I talked about how our pets are superhero’s. I talked about how I wish we could be more like or pets, they seem to always take the higher road and they are more than happy to listen to everything you have to say. One of my main points was that pets don’t care if you are black, white, brow, Republican, Democrat, boy or girl. They see us as theirs and love us that way. Imagine if we were to take our cues from our pets? Each morning we wake up with the excitement of the new day. They stop and listen when our person talks and have this way about them where they know before their human does that they need to draw near. I think if we as humans could see outside of our bubbles we have created for ourselves we would see there are more ways to be kind that to spread hatred and hurt.

A client came in today to bring her dog in for another surgery to “debulk” a mass that is cancerous and is slowly getting bigger. She was in a hurry this more and was a little perturbed that she had to wait and that she had to fill out surgery paperwork again. When I had gone out to talk with her about her options before surgery she let me know how upset she was and that she was super busy today and needed to get going for a meeting. She had indicated that she wasn’t in the right state of mind to make decisions. Normally for me this would have gotten me a bit worked up because I was just doing my job, but since I knew this really wasn’t about me, I was able to take a different approach with her. For O’Neill recognized that this lady loves her dog. Her dog has cancer and so that adds to the stress. This is about the forth time we have had to do this type of surgery and so the questions seemed repetitive to her. She had been in a hurry this morning and had seen other clients come and go before she was taken care of so she was irritated, and finally she didn’t understand why she couldn’t fill the paperwork out before the day of surgery so that she could just drop off and go.

As I listened I could see her frustrations and where the stress level was so I offered to call her after her meeting so that she could be in a better state of mind to make decisions, I informed her that we would call her right when we were done so that she could rest easy and lastly I let her know that when we have to do this procedure again we would have no problem giving her the paperwork in advance, she just needed to let us know that is was she would like. One of the things I have noticed that stops us from being kind to people and actually listening to them is the fact that we think it is all about us. If the person doesn’t agree with us, then they don’t like us. If a person is upset and they are talking to us about it, it may just be that they are upset about a situation not you. We have to get out of our mindsets that everything is about us.

As I write this I am convicted myself. I think that I am a nice person, and patient as well, but when I start to hear the dialog in my head I am so very thankful that it isn’t something that those around me can hear. It is a struggle daily because I hold people to the same standards I hold myself to and when they fall short, I go down the road of judgment. So when the words of this song I have been hearing a lot lately are sung, I am convicted and I have to make the conscious decision to stop going down that road. Here are the words to the song Revolutionary by Josh Wilson:

Maybe you’re not like me, maybe we don’t agree, Maybe that doesn’t mean we gotta be enemies. Maybe we just get brave, take a leap of faith, call a truce so me and you can find a better way

Let’s take some time, open our eyes, look and listen, yeah. And we’re gonna find we’re more alike than we are different, yeah

Why does kindness seem revolutionary, when did we let hate get so ordinary, let’s turn it around, flip the script, judge slow, love quick, God help us get revolutionary.

I’m turning the TV down, Drowning their voices out, cause I believe that you and me can find some common ground. See maybe I’m not like you, but I’ll walk a mile in your shoes if it means I might see the world the way you do.

Josh Wilson