One of the most difficult things in life is to think of of the impossible and make it happen. Someone suggested to me that we need to be kind to the unkind. I was flabbergasted. How can one be kind to someone who is unkind to you ? I said it is difficult even for me even to imagine it. However, I agreed to reflect on it and review.

On thinking about it for a while, I realised that ,may be it is true and a necessity. It is like you need to give food to the hungry and not to the well fed. Similarly, we need to be kind to the people around us, who are unkind to us.

Let us imagine our first experiences in life. The teacher in our class has to be kind, to the most difficult student in the class. Sometimes as a fellow student, one may wonder why the teacher is kind to her most errant student in class. Once ,when I asked a Principal a similar question, she replied that it is teachers and parents, who have to mould that child and such children need more help than others.

If we move to our own family, we may have not noticed that parents tend to spend more time with the truant child at home. Again, parents realise that the errant child needs more help than others to get back on the right path.

The workplace may not be very different. The best leaders will always spend more time with the most underperforming employees. This is not because they love to do it but again because they need the maximum support.

Life is no different than all such experiences at school, home or at the workplace. While, it may be difficult to be kind to the unkind, it is a test of our capability to rise above selfish limits and help those who may have been unkind to us.

A mother does not distinguish between a well behaved child or an ill behaved child. The unconditional love is showered on all children without expecting anything in return. Similarly, we have to learn to be helpful to people ,who least deserve it.

Our act of unconditional kindness will give us unlimited joy and mould us into selfless human beings. We may not realise that sometimes ,our acts of kindness may get us unexpected favours from people, whom we least expect it from.

The joy of giving is limitless. The acts of kindness need to be selfless. The benefactors should be boundary-less. Our actions should speak louder than our words. Our giving should always be more than our receiving.

The people who need it ,may not be the people who deserve it. But we need to give to the needy ,not to the more fortunate around us. Let us learn to give without expecting anything in return.

Life is more gratifying when we try the impossible and make it possible. Let us try to be kind to the unkindest people around us from today and experience the magic of kindness in our hearts.

S Ramesh Shankar

28th January 2023