Defining Kindness.

I’ve often wondered whether I’m a kind person, and I don’t honestly think I am. It seems to me that when I do something that appears to be kind, I’m usually doing it because helping others generally makes me feel good. In other words, I’m doing it for my own sake.

Ah but, you might argue, if performing a generous or helpful act makes you feel good, that’s an adequate definition of kindness. Is it? I don’t know. Any discussion on this subject could go on for a long time and wander down several different roads.

I wonder, though, whether a true act of kindness must involve some element of personal sacrifice, given freely and in such circumstances that the pain, discomfort, loss, or whatever accrues on the debit side, outweighs the pleasure gained in helping others. Could that be somewhere close to an accurate definition, or am I now confusing kindness with selflessness?

It often isn’t easy being a human who wants to know what it’s all about. That’s why I so like the wee small hours. Give me a few scotches, a world gone quiet apart from my choice of music, and some pointy-eared women with flashing eyes, and I don’t really care very much.