Kindness, If Not Accompanied By Action, Is Useless

Kindness is the authentic symbol of the superiority of the human being ; however, if it is not accompanied by an action, it is of no use. We all know the type of person who says a lot and does little, who uses noble words and acts selfishly. Let us begin, then, to change the world, to translate the authentic nobility of our hearts into actions.

This idea, which may seem obvious, denotes an evident fact: there are many who practice a type of immobility where it is enough for them to think they are “good people” to satisfy, thus, their own contradictory satisfaction. However, they are unable to see nearby needs, concrete facts that demand an elementary empathy from the person that we do not see as much as we would like.

Someone once said that to end evil, all it takes is for good people to act, to do something.  Kindness is not an empty entity, it is not a pill a person takes to ennoble their heart and make a donation to an NGO, let alone a title to boast about.

Kindness is not something that is chosen, it is something that is felt and that imposes an imperative need to act, to respond, to assist and support, despite the rest of the world not understanding or criticizing this fact. Kindness is, therefore, an authentic heroic act.

We propose that you reflect on this.

Good people are made of another kind of material.

We are aware that this issue can generate some controversy. First, many will wonder what we mean by “good people”, what makes them different from others and why they are often said to be anonymous, silent heroines who don’t advertise much. Well, it  is necessary to clarify that, with the categorization of “good”, we do not mean that the rest of the people are “bad”. We are not establishing any dichotomy.

Kindness is, above all, the absence of self-centeredness. If we isolate this variable in our education, we will have a behavioral profile where dimensions such as empathy, compassion and altruism inhabit. However, an exceptional trait of this personality type is that they are made of material that no one sees. It is enough to delve into the first layer of their skin to discover that, beneath it, they shine: they are people who put their needs apart from their own.

This last aspect is not seen very often.  Not all of us prioritize our fellow men to the point of relativizing our own needs, and the fact that we don’t do it or don’t feel it doesn’t make us bad people. Simply, this kind of sacrifice or such altruistic will is alien to us, strange and even contradictory. Perhaps, for this reason, we do not understand why so many volunteers put their lives at risk to help people who are far away.

In fact, sometimes we also don’t understand that friend, neighbor, co-worker or brother who gives everything for the community without expecting anything in return. Kindness, like the rest of motivations, is not always understood, and precisely because of this misunderstanding, it rarely receives the recognition it deserves.

If you practice kindness, something will change in your brain

To practice authentic kindness, it is not necessary to give all our goods to others. Nor is it necessary to travel to India or Tibet, nor to take sides in wars that are not ours to help the downtrodden or needy.  Authentic goodness begins around us,  in the things that happen every day in front of us that we often don’t see.

No act of kindness, however small, will be a waste of  time. Just take the first step and act and, little by little, our brain will start to experience small but big changes. So much so that you will be surprised to learn that acts such as generosity and altruism activate the same neuronal mechanisms in our brain as empathy.

When doing something meaningful for others, we receive from our brains a load of  endorphins  that reinforce, in some way, this prosocial behavior that dignifies our species. Human beings’ main priority is to guarantee their survival, thus, goodness accompanied by action, and not just desire, guarantees this fundamental principle.

On the other hand, something that we should never neglect is giving our children this kind of vital focus.  Jerome Kagan, a psychologist at Harvard University, has demonstrated through his work that babies have an innate ability to connect positively with the people who carry them. Emotional caresses favor and enhance the maturation of a child’s brain in a simply wonderful way.

Therefore, if we sow the value of empathy, respect and altruism in them, we will all win in this era of modernity and new technologies. It is a great challenge and an act of great responsibility in which we all count, where we are all important. Because if our species managed to evolve to give shape to what we call “humanity”, now we  just need to take one more step to give shape to an authentic common consciousness, a network based on mutual respect, compassion and the value of the other as part from yourself.