Kindness -- The Antidote for 100 Million Deaths

by Gregory Allen Butler

Kindness is to life is as color is to a painter. Both are used for the creation of beauty. Both are used as acknowledgements of life.

Mark Joiner of Simpleology sent out an e-mail today with some information about Amelia Earhart that he wanted everyone to share with five other people. I'm going beyond that and putting it on my blog: On July 1, 1937 she set off to fly around the world. On July 2nd her plane mysteriously disappeared and she was never heard from again ...She left the world with a great many things, one of them being this quote:

No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to
another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness
throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and
make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is
that it makes them kind themselves.

Thank you, Mark.

Yes, it is amazing what this positive energy can accomplish. It's like turning on a light bulb. It eliminates the darkness. It has the knack of eliciting a response that is also kind. It seems like an obvious self-evident truth. But why is the world so unkind? Why do we have so many wars? How is it possible that in the 20th century over 100 million died violent deaths at the hands of other human beings?

What is the attitude of mind that makes this state of affairs possible? Is it a collective dysfunction of the human mind? Is it a misidentification of who and what we really are?

Any value that we have that does not embrace the whole is an illusory value. Fragmented thinking, excluding groups of people because they are different, is a cause of this collective dysfunction. I cringe every time I hear a politician say "God bless America." If God is the source of everything and everyone, and is infinite, then why not invoke His blessing for the whole world.

It is easy to be kind to our friends. But when we are kind to strangers and adversaries, that is when its impact reaches full potential. Do you remember the words of JFK at his American University speech in June of 1963? He was speaking about American's biggest adversary, The Soviet Union, but he wasn't being exclusive, but inclusive. He recognized their humanity: "For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

Everybody in the world has divine essence within and is here in the world as an expression of divinity. But when we label, judge, categorize and refuse to try to understand, we lose ground. Fragmentation breeds contempt. Will the 21st century be a repeat of the 20th century with another 100 million violent deaths?

Or will kindness break out of its confinements and spread across the world like a flu epidemic?

Has it become easier for people to be infected with the flu than with kindness? After all, there isn't a vaccine to prevent it. Only narrow minded thinking.