{"id":439,"date":"2019-10-15T08:50:58","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T12:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/?p=439"},"modified":"2019-10-14T20:52:04","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T00:52:04","slug":"topical-tuesday-kindness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/15\/topical-tuesday-kindness\/","title":{"rendered":"Topical Tuesday: Kindness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Greetings to you all! It\u2019s already Tuesday- hard to believe, isn\u2019t it? October is flashing by in a blink of the eye. Another thing that often goes unnoticed or under-appreciated like time is kindness. Now, before I delve into the topic for today, I\u2019d like to note that kindness as a topic was kindly given to me by my friend. I was whining as usual about not having an idea in time for what to write about, and she mentioned the idea of kindness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, let\u2019s dive into it. First, what IS kindness? When I think about it, I think a bit about how I was taught it in Hebrew school as a kid. A mitzvah, or good deed, is something done for another\u2019s benefit. Kindness is generally doing such things, even if it\u2019s just talking to someone who needs to talk. But the greatest mitzvah, I was told, is one where no one knows you were the one to do it. That\u2019s where I intend to diverge a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, kindness is an act of selfishness in its own right, at least to me. When I\u2019m kind to people, it\u2019s not just common courtesy or doing something for someone else. It\u2019s because when I help someone, I feel a unique and genuine sense of happiness. Their smiles make me smile, their words of thanks make me thankful. It may sound more or less like empathy, but in reality, I do nice things for people because I want those feelings to reflect on. So to me, while something I do might be nice, it\u2019s also just me selfishly getting the emotional fodder I desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I said before, kindness is doing good unto others. Common forms of kindness I personally like to do are things like listening when someone\u2019s down, holding doors open, offering or getting someone visiting a drink\u2026 You know, really common courtesy things like that. Well, I think they\u2019re common courtesy. They should be, at any rate. But I digress. The point is, it doesn\u2019t have to be a grand gesture- what matters is you\u2019re doing it because you want to help them, and\/or want to feel their gratitude. And sometimes, you know what? You won\u2019t get that gratitude you want. But even without their spoken gratitude, it feels nice doing something for someone else. And you can milk that feeling any number of ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the best part about being kind? People are more likely to do nice things for you back! Just the other day, I went to Walgreens to pick up some cosmetics. I agreed to do a somewhat longer than advocated survey about the nice lady that helped me find what I was looking for. As a thank you, she gave me a freebie- she claimed it was something special for me only, but I\u2019m still a little unsure if she was telling the truth. Either way though, I got a reward for doing something nice for her, just like she was nice to me. \u201cNo good deed goes unpunished\u201d is the common phrase, but it doesn\u2019t actually always mean something bad as a punishment. The point of it is simply that every action has a reaction- and sometimes, those reactions are the nice little things that brighten up our day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ll only take one thing out of this rambling mess, I hope it will be this: If you feel like being kind, don\u2019t hold back. Do what you think will make someone smile and accept that it\u2019s partially selfish sometimes to yearn for that smile, that gratitude. Sometimes, it\u2019s okay to be selfish. If we\u2019re being selfish by helping someone or doing something nice for them, surely there are bigger crimes, are there not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me, my readers! What\u2019s something kind that\u2019s happened to you recently? And what kindness have you spread so far this week? I\u2019d love to hear your views on this topic, and get to learn more about you and more about the different views people have of kindness. Whether we match or differ, I\u2019d be glad if you\u2019ll be kind enough to tell me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, until next time! Bye bye!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greetings to you all! It\u2019s already Tuesday- hard to believe, isn\u2019t it? October is flashing by in a blink of the eye. Another thing that often goes unnoticed or under-appreciated like time is kindness. Now, before I delve into the topic for today, I\u2019d like to note that kindness as a topic was kindly given…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[33,2],"tags":[176,179,178,177,175,180],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8uAZQ-75","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}