Odarin the Good Wizard

Kindness

Kindness is simply the act of being nice to someone or is there more to it?

How is it the same or different than altruism?

Can a person be kind without wanting something in return?

Is being kind a service to others, to self, or both?

These are the questions posed by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and theologians. No one has the answers, but many have attempted finding insights through experiments. These experiments seek to better understand what drives altruistic behavior in individuals.

Some researchers have found that human’s seek cooperation. We want to get along. From their perspective, this happens because longer decision making involves careful deliberation. When we’re asked to make a decision right now our actions are more intuitive.

Kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Affection, gentleness, warmth, concern, and care are words that are associated with kindness. While kindness has a connotation of meaning someone is naive or weak, that is not the case. Being kind often requires courage and strength. Kindness is an interpersonal skill.

One way to be kind is to open your eyes and be active when you see people in need. Do you notice when people could use a helping hand? A sense of community is created when people are kind to those who need help.

Opening your eyes means noticing when others are suffering. A kind word, a smile, opening a door, or helping carry a heavy load can all be acts of kindness. Celebrating someone you love, giving honest compliments, sending an email thanking someone, telling someone how s/he is special to you, helping an elderly neighbour with yard work or food, taking a photo of someone and sending it to the person, sharing homemade food, refusing to gossip, and donating old clothing and things you don’t need are all ideas about how to practice kindness.

Odarin continued to travel spreading his special blend of kindness to all, with a hint of magic along the way, to live to a ripe and satisfied old age. He knew the angel of death was close by and asked a favour from him and death complied proving to Odarin that even death had a certain amount of compassion. When Odarin passed over Death covered him in his favourite robes and buried him with great decency and a heart felt tribute because of the lives Odarin, helped changed and made better for his simple kind actions.

On his tomb stone he engraved these words....

Here lays Odarin the kindest Wizard who ever lived. If we can learn to treat ourselves and others with more compassion, perhaps we will find that the superficial outcomes we seek are less important than we once thought. RiP

Being kind is not about how you feel. It’s about what you do.

oh and by the way....The End.