Killing with Kindness

Today’s Best
Published at Metropost
July 29,2007
Today”s Best
By Muffet Dolar Villegas
Killing with Kindness

Once, in her growing up years, my daughter asked me, “How can I get even with my enemy?” I told her, “ You may get even with your enemy in so many ways, but he or she remains your enemy. But if you don’t want an enemy, you may kill your enemy with kind deeds.” The next day she told me with a smile on her face. “Mommy, I did it. I helped her and we became friends.”
Abraham Lincoln said, “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”
Life is full of spices. We make friends and we also create enemies. Sometimes we can explain the first, but we get confused by the latter as to how it happened. Whether we like it or not there are people who don’t like us. They may not like our style, our voice, our hair, our habits or our mannerisms. They may not even like our tone, our colors, our lifestyles or our guts. Even our hairstyle get onto their nerves or the way we walk or the way we talk. Other people’s opinion is out of our control, but sometimes we can also learn from them.
I heard someone say, “I can’t explain it, but there is something in that person that simply irritates me.” Ofentimes, our biases or prejudices come from a long time ago experience. Others may have been influenced by our friends or from people close to us.
Others make friends so easily but others take a long time to open their hearts for someone.
But sometimes, the indifference of a person comes from frustration or some deep hurt which others have inflicted upon them. When one hates you, hating back is not an answer. Compassion is the right reaction. A vengeful heart is unhappy, but a compassionate, understanding and loving heart is the source of joy.
It was told that a wounded soldier, lay in pain in the middle of the gunfire, the enemy who was also a young lad took the risk of helping the wounded young man. In the middle of the battlefield, all the fighting stopped, as they witnessed one act of kindness which history may have forgotten, but it was etched in the young man’s heart, who received that kindness.
Famous author Ettiene De Grellet said, “ I expect to pass this way but once, any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not deter or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.”
Kindness is an oil that mends a rusty or broken heart. It takes kindness to see a person’s beautiful self, and to win friends and destroy enemies.
Human nature is both complex and wonderful. Each one of us has the good and the dark side. But the beauty in life is that we always have a choice.
Jesus said in Matthew 9:13,”I desire kindness, not sacrifice.”